


gonna set your flag on fire

by openended



Series: Olivia Shepard [23]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Anxiety, Cerberus - Freeform, Cerberus and their questionable ethics, Control Chips, Family, Family Feels, Fight Scenes, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Guest Starring: Abby Williams, Guest Starring: Karin Chakwas, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kids, MOM FEELINGS, Mission Fic, Missions Gone Wrong, OC-centric, Panic Attacks, Parenthood, Post-Reaper War, Siblings, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Unconventional Families, author shamelessly steals from the west wing, like way into the future, not sure why that went to all caps but i’m here for it, they're trying to turn on a gizmo and it hurts a lot., this feels like it needs a more explicit torture warning but they're not Torturing her torturing her
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 01:02:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15546168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: Thirty years after the war, things are as close to normal as they’ll get. Garrus is the turian councilor, and Olivia runs Galactic Affairs, helping the galaxy rebuild. They’ve happily settled into the life they’ve built. Their kids are grown, and out living their own lives.But something goes wrong on Nora’s latest mission. Very wrong. And it’s all hands on deck for the rescue.(feat. Nora Vakarian and her ragtag squad)





	1. upside down with a perfect view

Later, when it’s all over and Nora’s sitting on the back porch of her grandmother’s house watching the sun rise over the lake, she’ll think she should’ve told James she’d take the eezo job. 

She’ll sip at her tea, tug the blanket tighter around her shoulders while the cat weaves his way around her legs, and replay that conversation with James a thousand times. The sky will turn from dusky grey to purple to warm oranges and pinks, and she’ll wish she’d accepted his offer – he gave her an out, and she ignored it.

She should’ve taken the eezo job. Instead, she took the Cerberus mission.

Hindsight.

***

**2191 - 23 years earlier**

Olivia scrubs a hand over her face as the elevator makes its slow descent to deck three. Eight years since the end of the war, four since they cobbled enough of the relay system back together that the galaxy could begin to function again, and it still feels like they’re fighting: reaper cults keep growing even though they’ve long since found a cure for indoctrination, there’s always an alliance-ending diplomatic crisis somewhere, and they’ve been playing whack-a-mole with stray Cerberus cells for years. It’s nice not to have to dodge banshees and brutes, or worry about the imminent end of the universe, but there are days she would like the galaxy to take care of its own bullshit for an hour so she can take a nap.

This is one of those days. She started out mediating the third day of an argument between Wrex and one of the new dalatrasses about blueprints salarian architects drew up for the Tuchanka rebuilding effort, she ate half her lunch while on a vidcall with Liara listening to intel on banshee worshippers out on the Far Rim (as far as she knows, the other half is still in her office), and spent the next two hours holed up in the AI Core reading a stack of reports while avoiding Cortez and the embedded reporter who won’t leave either of them alone.

She misses Allers.

Their stop at Tereshkova was only long enough to refuel and pick up Abby Williams and whatever recon she found on her latest mission. Olivia loves the _Normandy_ , even more in its third incarnation, but she’s glad she isn’t her captain anymore. Four days back to the Citadel, and then she’s home - at least until the next time the Council decides she’s needed for face-to-face diplomacy. She has three messages from Garrus on her omnitool, and hasn’t had a chance to check them all day.

The elevator doors open and she nods at Ashley, waiting for her. 

“It’s a kid,” Ashley says, uncrossing her arms as they fall into step with each other.

“ _What_?”

“The data Abby picked up – it’s a kid. A girl. She was the only one left alive.”

Olivia stops and turns to Ashley. “This is your ship now, but you seriously let a kid from a Cerberus station on board?”

Ashley nods. “It’s not like we didn’t take any precautions.” She points.

The usually-occupied mess area is empty of barely-awake lieutenants and hungry sergeants, replaced instead by a contingent of marines, armed and standing at the ready; four more stand guard inside the medbay. Olivia looks through the medbay windows and sees a small girl sitting inside a sealed glass container set on one of the exam tables. Mass effect field generators clamped to the container’s corners glow faintly blue, and she recognizes the symbol painted on its sides: the container will withstand a ten-ton thermonuclear explosion inside of it. “Fair enough,” she says.

Abby steps out of the medbay. As tall as her older sister, she’s leaner, built for speed instead of Ashley’s muscle. She’s still in her lithe armor, with her sword still strapped to her back. “Captain,” she salutes Olivia, “Commander,” she turns to Ashley.

“At ease, Lieutenant,” Ashley says. “What’s going on?”

Abby exhales heavily. “We got some intel about a Cerberus station orbiting Rayingiri. I went in –”

“Alone?” Ashley asks, ever the older sister.

Silently, Abby points to the N7 on her chest and the two crossed swords beneath it, identifying her Shadow designation. “I went in, just to get recon; Liselle and Rosie were on their way to back me up for the attack. I guess the op was blown somehow: everyone on that station was dead before I got there – suicide. They all had their heads half blown off from that capsule thing in their teeth.”

Olivia grimaces. She’s seen no shortage of grisly scenes, but that’s particularly nasty. “What about the girl?”

“Rosie hacked the station records. Her name’s Nora Milton, four years old. Father died last year in that raid in the Hades Nexus, mother was an engineer on the station, working on a Cerberus project code named Damocles.”

Olivia’s attention shifts back to the girl in the glass box. She’s tucked herself up into the back corner, as far away from the guards and Doctor Chakwas as she can get, hugging her knees to her chest. “And Damocles is?”

Abby shrugs and shakes her head. “No idea. They wiped most of their servers. All we got was a crew manifest, shipping logs, and some low-security email. Nothing that flagged Alliance intelligence when we ran it past them.”

“Send it to me,” Olivia says. “I know people who may be able to do more with it.” Liara’s had her own troubles getting anything out of the remaining Cerberus cells, but she may have more luck than the Alliance.

Abby nods. “Sure.”

“Thanks, Abby,” Ashley says. She lightly squeezes her sister’s arm before heading toward the medbay doors. She gestures for Olivia to go first. 

Doctor Chakwas looks up at the _whoosh_ of the doors and waves the two women over. Olivia pauses to smile at the scared girl, but none of them trust Cerberus not to use a four-year-old girl as a bomb.

“Physically,” Chakwas says as she pulls up a series of scans on her monitor, “she’s mostly normal. Probably dehydrated and a little malnourished, I’ll know more once we get a blood test, but she looks like a perfectly healthy four-year-old human.”

“I hear a _but_ coming,” Ashley says. Olivia nods in agreement.

“And correctly so.” Chakwas taps on the display and it zooms in on the girl’s brain. She points at a tiny square in the middle. “She has a microchip implanted near her cerebrum.”

Olivia’s eyes narrow. “I think we can safely assume that’s not good.” She clenches her jaw as she flashes back to a few uncomfortable conversations with Miranda. Nora’s a _toddler_. “Can you get it out?”

The doctor shakes her head. “It’s deep in her brain, and she’s very young. Even with the Citadel’s surgical AIs, the risk of brain damage or death are extremely high.”

“How about turning it off?” Ashley suggests.

“EDI’s working on that,” Chakwas says. “She’s also sent the information to Tali.”

Olivia looks over her shoulder. The girl’s still curled up in her corner, but she’s watching the three of them with wide eyes. “Besides the chip,” she turns back to Chakwas, “is there anything else wrong with her? Any indication that she’s going to explode or start some sort of virus...anything?”

“I haven’t been able to check her directly while she’s in the box, but no, not that my scans have shown.”

Olivia looks at Ashley. She’d let Nora out, but the _Normandy_ isn’t her ship anymore, and Doctor Chakwas and the guards outside aren’t her crew. “Your ship, your call.”

Ashley presses her lips together. She looks up at the display screen, to Nora, to Olivia, and back to Nora. “She’s four,” she says, “if the chip does do anything, I think we can take her.” She turns to one of the guards. “Clear the entire deck. In five minutes, we’re opening that box.” He nods and rushes out with the others. She taps her omnitool. “Vega.”

_“Yeah, Boss?”_

“In five minutes, Shepard and I are opening a container holding a very small child who may or may not be a Cerberus booby trap. I need you to put the ship into lockdown and get ready to quarantine the deck if necessary.”

_“Uh, are you sure that’s wise?”_

“No,” Ashley says. “But she’s four years old and we can’t keep her in a glass box forever.”

 _“Lockdown in effect,_ ” he says as a low alarm pulses through the ship, _“and Level 4 quarantine on standby.”_

A quiet whimper escapes from Nora’s throat and her eyes fill with tears. Olivia taps a command into a nearby medical console, and the alarm silences inside the medbay. Nora sniffles.

“Thanks, Vega.” Ashley ends the call and looks at Olivia. “You want to take this? You’ve actually got kids.”

“They’re eight and ten and turian, Ash. My frame of reference isn’t exactly wider than yours here.” One of the messages from Garrus was a photo. Quentus had his first _durak_ tournament today. She hopes it went well; he was so excited.

“Okay. How about – you’ve actually been a Cerberus experiment before?”

“Does Traynor know you’re this reluctant to be around kids?”

“I’m not,” Ashley says. “Except when they were the only one left alive on a station full of dead people and we’re keeping them in a box built to contain a ten-ton nuke.”

“Wimp.” Olivia grins and steps up to the box. She gives Nora her best reassuring smile. 

Ashley checks her watch and, after five minutes have passed, taps her command code into the box’s control panel. It beeps, and the latch unlocks with a hiss. Slowly, and with a low mechanical hum, the top panel retracts.

Nora looks up, eyes even wider. Her lower lip starts to quiver, and she looks straight at Olivia.

“It’s okay,” she tells her, “we’re getting you out of there.” 

As soon as the top fully retracts, Ashley and Olivia unlatch the front side, laying it down on the bed, leaving Nora sitting in a three-walled box.

Nora blinks once, twice, and then scrambles to the edge of the bed and wraps her arms around Olivia’s waist. She moves so fast she scrapes her arm on one of the hinges, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“Oh!” Olivia exclaims. She runs her fingers through the ends of Nora’s tangled brown curls and sets her other hand on her back. Nora presses her face into her stomach. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she whispers. 

The entire medbay holds its breath.

“So,” Ashley says after ten minutes have passed without incident. “Not a bomb.”

Olivia shakes her head. Nora hasn’t let go, and so neither has she. “Not a bomb.”

“Any sign of contagion?” Ashley asks Chakwas.

“None.”

Ashley exhales. “It’s nice to be wrong sometimes.” 

While Ashley calls Vega and tells him to lift the lockdown and take his finger off the quarantine trigger, Olivia looks down at the small girl still hugging her tight. A thin trail of blood trickles down Nora’s arm from the scrape. Olivia gestures for Chakwas to come over and check her out.

“Can I have your arm, please?” Chakwas asks.

Nora shakes her head and hugs even tighter.

“Nora,” Olivia says quietly, “I need you to let go so the doctor can look at you.” Again, Nora shakes her head. “I’ll be right here. You can sit on my lap.”

After a moment, Nora loosens her arms, but doesn’t let go. Olivia shifts and lifts Nora up, settling her on her hip as she carries her over to another exam table – one without the bomb-proof box on it. She sits Nora on the table and then hops up and crosses her legs underneath her. “Come here,” she says, and Nora scrambles into her lap. Nora settles, pressing her back into Olivia’s chest, and Olivia rests her arms around Nora’s waist.

Chakwas scans the scrape, and then runs a dermal regenerator over her arm. “There we go,” she says.

Nora whimpers, but otherwise doesn’t make a sound.

***

By the time she finally gets to call Garrus, it’s well past two in the morning at home on the Citadel. She at least had a chance to read his messages at dinner: a good morning smiley face, an update on the batarian trade agreement discussions (going about as terribly as she anticipated), Nico’s report card was all top marks, Quentus and his team won and will advance to the next round (sent with a picture of her eldest, pointing at the scoreboard and grinning proudly), and a final message asking if she was okay. She sent him a quick response – _crazy day, will call, probably late_ – thankful for autocorrect, as Nora kept trying to grab her arm and put it back around her.

Nora’s sound asleep in the bed. She was quiet – almost happy – throughout the entire day, through a lengthy round of medical tests, through a half bath/half shower that had Olivia, Abby, and most of the women’s bathroom soaked by the end, and quiet even through Olivia combing out her hair. But the minute Olivia tried to settle her in for the night, tucked in amongst a pile of pillows on a bed in the medbay, Nora started crying. Tears turned to screams when Olivia stepped away and turned off the light. 

Olivia took some spare blankets and pillows from the crew quarters, settled Nora into her bed, and made a makeshift bed for herself on the couch. She’s left the door unlocked, a concession to everyone’s paranoia, in case anything happens in the middle of the night and the two guards standing outside need to storm in.

 _“I wonder why she imprinted on you so hard,”_ Garrus says, after she’s told him everything.

Though she’s exhausted, Olivia manages a smirk for her husband. “Oh, come on. I’m totally lovable.”

 _“You are_ ,” his mandibles flutter, _“but that’s not what I meant, Shepard.”_

Olivia sighs and rests her head in her hands. “I know Cerberus isn’t known for their humanitarianism, but she’s so little, Garrus. Who the hell puts a control chip inside a four-year-old?” The _why_ of it gnaws at her even more.

 _“Olivia_ ,” he says gently, in a similar voice to the one he uses with their boys when they have a nightmare.

She inhales and looks up. “I’m fine,” she says, though by his lifted brow plate she can tell he doesn’t believe her. She pushes her hair out of her face. “EDI and Tali think they have a way to turn off the chip, so we’re going to try that in the morning. How are the boys?” She wanted to talk to them before they went to bed tonight. She misses them.

 _“Nico made me promise to actually show you his grades,”_ Garrus taps on his omnitool, and hers lights up with a new message and an image attachment, _“and Quentus scored two goals today.”_

Her omnitool lights up again, this time with a video attachment. She opens the picture while the video downloads, and smiles. Nico struggles to make friends in school, but he doesn’t struggle with the academics at all; even at eight, he’s so proud of his grades. She presses play on the video, keeping the volume quiet, and watches proudly as Quentus makes two goals in a row.

“I wanted to be there,” she says wistfully.

 _“He knows,”_ Garrus assures her. _“And he also knows that sometimes Uncle Wrex needs you in the room to keep him from eating someone.”_

“Still,” she sighs. She’s missed games before, they both have, but it was his first tournament. Hopefully his team will stay in after the next round, and she’ll get to see him play when she’s back home.

_“Are you on schedule to be home next week?”_

“Yes,” she nods. “And if Wrex and the dalatrass haven’t sorted out their differences by then, they can bite me.”

_“The ship’s still in one piece after three days. You may not have them drinking tea together, but they’ll come to an agreement.”_

“Okay, now I’m just thinking about Wrex with a teacup,” she laughs quietly.

His mandibles flick open in a grin. _“Good. Get some sleep, Liv.”_

“You too. I’ll call you tomorrow, hopefully a little earlier.”

_“Alright. I love you.”_

“I love you, too.” She ends the vidcall and her monitor goes dark, leaving the room lit only by stars outside and faint light coming around the half-shut bathroom door.

Nora shifts and makes a quiet sleepy huff as her feet gently kick at the blankets. 

“I hope this works tomorrow,” Olivia whispers to herself.

***

“Ah, Shepard?” Chakwas says, as EDI finishes her calculations. “You shouldn’t be standing there when they do this.”

Olivia opens her mouth to ask why, but she follows the doctor’s gaze down to her leg. _Oh_. It’s not that she _forgets_ her right leg is a cybernetic prosthetic now, it’s that it hasn’t bothered her for a few days and she’s had other things on her mind. “Right.” From what she understands, the EMP will be targeted toward Nora’s brain, but it’s still best not to risk it. 

_“We’re ready, Shepard,”_ Tali says from the monitor.

She looks down at Nora sitting on the exam table beside her. Nora’s kept her wide eyes on the EMP minigun since EDI set it up. She doesn’t seem scared of it, just staring at something new.

“You ready?” Olivia doubts Nora fully understands what’s about to happen, but she’s not going to give Tali the go ahead if Nora isn’t sure.

Nora looks up at her and blinks.

It’s not a _no_.

“I’ll be right here,” she says, and takes a few steps away out of range. She nods to Tali and EDI. “Go ahead.”

Tali taps at her controls, transmitting the code to EDI. _“All yours_ ,” she says.

EDI nods, and presses a few buttons on the side of the EMP gun. There’s a series of short beeps, and then EDI turns to Olivia and Chakwas. “It’s completed.”

Olivia raises an eyebrow. She’d expected…more. “That’s it?”

“Yes.”

She looks at Nora, who doesn’t look any different. “Did it work?”

Chakwas runs a handheld scanner over Nora’s head, and peers at the results displaying on the bedside manner. “It’s no longer emitting a signal.” She looks over her shoulder at Tali and EDI, both waiting expectantly. “It looks like it worked.”

Olivia nods slowly. “Send a message to Miranda,” she tells EDI, “have her meet us when we dock at the Citadel. It’s not that I don’t trust your work, guys, it’s –”

“ _That you don’t trust Cerberus wouldn’t put failsafes into place in case anyone tried what we just did,_ ” Tali says.

“Bingo.”

“ _We can pretend we’re still working, if you want to avoid the dalatrass a little longer,”_ Tali teases.

Olivia grimaces. “It’s a miracle I haven’t gotten at least five nasty messages from her yet.” She owes Cortez an entire bar’s worth of drinks for keeping the dalatrass at bay this morning.

_“Let me know if you need anything else.”_

“Will do. Thanks again, Tali.”

 _“No problem, Shepard.”_ Her vidcall blinks out.

Olivia turns back to Nora, only to find Chakwas looking at her with a distinctly pointed look. “What?”

“Nora is welcome to stay. But you _cannot_ avoid the dalatrass all day by hiding in here.”

Aware that she sounds like a petulant child, yet not caring in the least, Olivia huffs. She almost misses Linron and Isheel. Almost. “ _Fine_.” She takes a deep breath and turns to Nora. “I’ll be back at the end of the day, okay?”

Nora just blinks. 

Olivia supposes if she watched the heads of everyone she knew explode, she wouldn’t talk either. She gently tucks Nora’s hair behind her ear and smiles. “Call me if she needs anything.” 

Chakwas nods. “Of course.”

But as soon as Olivia has one foot out the door, Nora sniffles and starts to cry.

Olivia stops in her tracks and walks back to Nora. She can’t avoid the negotiations – she really does need to resolve things between the dalatrass and Wrex – but it looks like she can’t leave Nora, either. Everyone will just have to deal with a small human child sitting at the negotiating table. 

***

 _"What do you think the Alliance will do with her?"_ Garrus asks later that night, when she sits back down after getting Nora a glass of water and settling her back to bed.

Olivia shrugs. "Run a thousand tests on her," she surmises. "Keep her in a cage, mess with the chip, see what it does." As if Nora needs more time spent in a science lab with people poking her. Sighing heavily, she rests her head in her hands and looks at him through her fingers. "What she needs is a _family_ , but they'll never let her go for proper adoption."

Garrus tilts his head and looks at her softly. _"They might if it was us."_

She raises her head, blinking at her husband. Her mind started down that same path earlier, but was blocked by a thousand different arguments: physical space, time, busy schedules, two parents wrangling three kids under ten. Their sons.

_"Liv, you know they're never going to let a civilian take her. And she already seems attached to you."_

Olivia bites her lip and looks away. "I don't want Quentus and Nico to think – I don't know." She's unsure how to voice that concern to him. Both boys have needed a lot from their parents, which she and Garrus have been so willing and happy to give, and she doesn't want them to feel like suddenly they're going to have less. They lost their birth parents to the war; the last thing she wants is for her sons to worry that they're not important anymore, or that she and Garrus are going to leave them too.

 _"I'll talk to them,"_ he says gently. _"See what they think about maybe having a little sister."_

"You haven't even met her," she says, though she knows that’s not even remotely a problem. Garrus has always been kind to those important to him, and he's grown impossibly kinder since becoming a father. He's light years away, and that kindness already extends to Nora.

His mandibles flutter. _"She likes you,"_ he says. _"She clearly has good judgment."_

She laughs quietly, a slight heat rising to her cheeks. Almost ten years, and he can still make her blush with a simple compliment. "Dork."

Before Garrus can respond, there's a noise behind him that sounds suspiciously like two young turian boys racing each other down the stairs.

Garrus looks over his shoulder. _"Incoming,"_ he confirms.

 _"Is that Mom?"_ Nico asks, off camera still.

 _"Mom, I made two goals today!"_ Quentus shouts, followed by the scrape of a kitchen chair urgently pushed out of the way.

Olivia scrambles for her earbuds so the excitement doesn't wake up Nora. Within seconds of getting the buds connected and in her ears, Quentus and Nico have both popped their heads up into the camera in front of Garrus. They're a little too close at first and fill the screen completely, competing to take up the most space, until Garrus pushes the monitor back a bit.

_"When are you coming home? I miss you."_

_"Dad let us have ice cream for dinner."_

Garrus clears his throat and looks down at his eldest. _"We weren’t going to tell her that."_

Laughing softly, Olivia smiles at the three most important people in her life. "I miss you guys too," she says. "I'll be home on Friday," she promises. "How was your day?"

As their sons excitedly tell her about their days, she briefly glances over their heads at Garrus. Her eyes lock with his, and he gives her a little nod. Smiling, she focuses her attention on Quentus retelling, in very animated detail, his game-winning goal.

***

Miranda spends a long time in silence, looking at Nora’s scans. 

Just when Olivia almost can’t stand the silence anymore, Miranda turns. “It’s a control chip. It’s a different model than I considered using, but it is definitely a control chip.” She steps to the side, gesturing for them to join her at the monitor. “Do you see those thin lines radiating from it?” She points on the screen and as soon as she sees what Miranda’s pointing at, Olivia wonders how she didn’t see the lines before. They’re light, but clear.

“Those are wires connecting to her memory centers. This design was still experimental when I was with Cerberus, evidently they’ve moved it into production.” Miranda looks at Chakwas. “You were correct not to operate. There hasn’t been time for her brain to grow around the chip, but it’s beginning to,” she points to faint shadows. “Given how young she is, surgery will cause permanent damage, and would likely kill her.”

"Then how did they implant it?" Chakwas asks.

Miranda glances back to the monitor. "The wires are grown post-implantation via nanotechnology. It’s likely you could surgically remove the chip itself, but the wires are the problem. Without knowing how they work, I wouldn’t recommend leaving them in there unconnected."

“Does Project Damocles ring a bell?” Olivia asks, before the two women can begin down a conversational black hole about pediatric neurosurgery neither she nor Ashley has half a hope of understanding.

Miranda shakes her head. “Unfortunately, no. Cerberus cells operated mostly independently. I only knew of a small handful of projects other than Lazarus. I’d imagine they’re even more independent now.”

"Any ideas why Cerberus might implant a control chip into a toddler?" Olivia’s been doing her best to ignore that reality, but the question has to be asked.

"Yes," Miranda says. "All of which you’ve probably thought of already, and none of them good."

Olivia shudders. She’s come up with plenty of theories, and they’re all terrifying.

“Okay, I’m just gonna ask,” Ashley says. “Is she safe? Can we let her off the ship?”

Miranda shrugs. “It’s been deactivated. Control chips work in one of two ways: either orders are transmitted directly to it, or there’s a designated controller whose voice activates the chip. Even if you hadn’t deactivated it, the likelihood of anyone knowing she’s alive to receive orders, or her encountering the controller are monumentally slim.”

Olivia shares a look with Ashley and Chakwas. “Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better.” She swallows. She’s long made her peace with Miranda’s confession, but that doesn’t mean it sits well.

“Well, it’s off,” Miranda says. “It doesn’t matter either way.”

“Her brain is still very young. Surgery isn’t a viable solution, and the chip and wires are microscopic, but I am concerned about the effects of a foreign object on her development,” Chakwas says, staring again at the scan.

Miranda purses her lips and takes a moment before responding. “I know Cerberus hasn’t always had the most responsible scientific practices, and I doubt they’ve improved in the wake of the Illusive Man’s death. Nora may very well be their first attempt, and she may be facing extreme developmental problems. Or, she could be the end of the experimental line and they got it right. Or, they could have perfected it years ago and she could be one of many. There’s no way to know for sure.”

Ashley stares at Miranda and then scoffs. She crosses her arms. “None of those is a comforting thought.”

“No,” Olivia agrees, and looks out the medbay windows. Nora’s sitting next to James at a table in the mess, playing with empty MRE boxes, the closest non-explosive thing to blocks they could find. Nora looks up from her tower and waves at Olivia. Olivia waves back; Nora started to cry when she left her with James to go speak with Miranda, but settled when she realized she could see Olivia through the window. Olivia dreads what happens when they get off the ship – when Nora has to go the Alliance, and she has to go home. 

“I think the next question is: what does the Alliance plan to do with her?” Miranda asks.

Olivia exhales slowly. “That is a _great_ question.”


	2. we were born to break the doors down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A pronunciation note: “Alle” is pronounced like “Allie”

**2214 - 23 years later**

_“Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit shit SHIT.”_

“Use your words, Torrini,” Nora says, crouched behind a boulder. Her supply pylon whirs and drops an arc grenade. She snaps it onto her bandolier. 

_“Bad guys. Lots of guns. Chasing me. Fuck!”_ His voice pitches upward as he draws out the curse to three syllables.

 _“You did volunteer to play bait_ ,” Micah reminds him. He sets his Black Widow on the boulder in front of him and peers through the scope. He looks at Nora on the opposite side of the creek, shakes his head, and sits down again.

 _“Not! Helping!”_ Carlos shouts, followed by a rapid _bang_ of Mattock fire. 

Movement catches Nora’s eye; she looks down by her feet, and instantly regrets it. An orange and black spider the size of her hand crawls up out of the grass onto her boulder. It starts to turn grey, camouflaging itself against the rock. Nora shudders and swallows back a gag: her armor these days is black with an orange stripe down the arm.

There’s a tiny splash, and she looks over at Micah.

“You okay?” he says off comms. 

She grimaces and pushes stray pieces of hair out of her face. Her braid was intact this morning, and then she stepped out of the tent. “We need to get off this planet.” It’s not the worst place they’ve ever been, not even in the top ten, but it’s hot and humid and she’s covered in itchy mosquito bites. And it has large spiders that can camouflage themselves.

Something crawls up her neck and she slaps at it. She looks down at her gloved fingers: nothing. She rubs at her neck just to make sure, and brushes away any other sweat that’s about to drip. At least the mission’s been pretty simple.

A biotic boom thunders through the entire valley. The echo’s barely faded before another explosion follows, and then another, coming closer. 

“About time Carter got here,” Micah says, shifting his weight so he can pop out of cover as soon as he’s needed. He collapses his Black Widow and exchanges it for his Typhoon.

Nora taps her omnitool, activating the external comm link and bringing their escape route into the conversation. “They’re on their way back, Starkhov. Get ready for extract.” She takes her sunglasses off the top of her head and slides them onto her face.

_“On it. Approaching now, three minutes out.”_

After her pylon drops a final grenade, she collapses it and attaches the small disc to her armor. This is her last pylon and she can’t afford to leave it anywhere, not until she makes it back to Tereshkova and can pick up the resupply package waiting for her. 

The spider, not quite the right shade of grey to blend in perfectly, changes its mind and crawls back into the grass. She scoots as far to the other end of the boulder as she can and still stay in cover. Her boot splashes in the shallow creek and slides a little on an algae-covered rock. She holds her balance and glares down at the grass where she last saw the spider. It’s probably green now, and she’ll never find it again. Good. It can stay here. 

The gunfire takes on a louder and sharper edge as the valley narrows and curves down with the river. Nora scopes into her teammates with her Valiant: Alle’s caught up with Carlos, and he’s setting off her annihilation field nearly as much as she is. Despite the force of near-constant biotic explosions, the raiders chasing them aren’t slowed by much. Alle yells to Carlos, and he turns around just in time to smash his omnishield into a raider. Carlos has the upper body strength of a raging bull and the guy goes flying, only to catch the edge of Alle’s biotic explosion and sail through the air like a ragdoll. 

_“Cover fire would not go unappreciated!”_ Alle shouts.

Nora and Micah both open fire. Nora ejects a spent thermal clip with one hand and flicks the pin out of a grenade with the other. “Fire in the hole!” she warns. Alle and Carlos sprint as hard as they can, and Nora hurls the grenade into the crowd behind them. It hits the ground with an angry electric crackle that shocks and stuns everyone within its range, giving her teammates half a moment to breathe.

Engines rumble overhead as Lucy flies into the valley. She sets the shuttle down, keeping it hovering for easier take off, a hundred yards behind Nora. The hatch opens and a combat drone flies out, speeding down the valley toward the stunned raiders. 

Nora holsters her Valiant, exchanging it for her Locust, and shifts so she’s squatting. She throws another grenade, and so does Micah. As soon as the other two run past her boulder, she pushes off, sprinting for the shuttle with Micah right behind her. Lucy has the shuttle moving half a second after Micah has both feet in the shuttle, and takes off.

Micah hits the door control, silencing the wind and birds and gunfire of pissed off raiders outside.

Nora pushes her sunglasses up into her hair. “Did you get it?”

Breathing hard, Alle nods and pushes back her hood, then slips off her backpack. She unzips the main pouch and withdraws a small metal box. “One copy of classified Alliance ship schematics. It didn’t look like they’d transmitted them yet or made copies, but I uploaded Julian's obliteration virus to their server and any contacts from the last month. And destroyed their uplink for good measure.”

Carlos pops open a refrigerated storage compartment in the side of the shuttle. He tosses a bottle of water to each of the other three before unscrewing the cap on one for himself. “I am not playing bait next time,” he says, breathless, once he’s drained half the bottle.

Micah braces a large hand on the top of the shuttle. “You volunteered,” he says again.

“I am just saying,” he says. “I am not bait again.”

Nora opens her omnitool and sends off a quick message to Vega – _mission a success, on our way back now_ – and takes a seat next to Alle. “I’ll be bait next time,” she says to silence the argument, and watches the valley grow smaller and smaller as they fly away.

***

_Nora drops into a crouch behind a pile of tires. “This is ridiculous,” she mutters._

_Alle nods in agreement from her spot behind a box a few feet away. “Not what I thought day one would look like.” She lifts up just a little to look over the box, and a bullet whizzes past. She ducks down again. “Two bogies, at eleven and three.”_

_A shot cracks across the field, followed immediately by a loud and emphatic “goddammit!” Both their omnitools light up_ –Chen, I. eliminated by Rabinowitz, M _._

_“Make that one bogey,” Alle says, swatting at a grasshopper jumping around in the tall weeds by her feet._

_Nora slides the barrel of her Valiant through a tire and surveys the space in front of them. “Eleven o’clock’s still there; I think it’s one of the vanguards.” The red outline in her scope blinks out of existence, only to reappear fifty feet farther away next to another red outline. “No, it’s definitely one of the vanguards.” She waits, but the two outlines don’t move to attack each other. “Looks like they’ve just teamed up with someone.” She scans around the rest of the area in her range. “And we have someone else at two.”_

_“More like one-thirty,” a new voice says._

_Nora spins on the balls of her feet and has her Locust withdrawn and aimed before she’s fully turned around. An impossibly-tall person in deep red armor stands in front of her, assault rifle pointed at her. A quick glance at Alle confirms her friend had the same thought process. She squints at him in the bright afternoon sun. “I rounded up.”_

_He taps a button and his helmet visor fades, revealing a dark-skinned man with a bright, kind smile. “Mind if I join up with you? You two look like you know what you’re doing.” He lowers his gun._

_“We try,” Alle says, lowering her own gun. “Pick a spot.”_

_“I’m Micah Rabinowitz,” he says, setting up behind a broken Mako between them._

_Nora quickly checks the group’s stats - she doesn’t know what Vega’s up to with this exercise, but she does know she doesn’t want to team up with someone who just got a lucky shot. No one gets into ICT based on lucky shots, but still. Some recruits are bound to be better than others._

_Micah’s second on the scoreboard, ahead of both her and Alle, although, she notices with a slight spark of joy, she is beating him in headshots. “Nora Vakarian,” she says, holstering her Locust again. “That’s Alexandra Carter.”_

_Alle looks over at him. “Call me Alle or I will find a box to stand on and punch you in the face.”_

_Micah smiles. “Roger that.” He looks back at Nora. “Do we have a plan?”_

_Two biotic booms echo across the field, and their omnitools buzz in unison_ –Kennedy, C. eliminated by Deckard, O.; Starkhov, L. eliminated by Deckard, O.

_“We hadn’t gotten much further than ‘die last,’” Nora admits. Her visor suddenly blares a low-shield warning. “What the hell?” She yanks her Valiant back from the tires and rapidly scopes in on the open area behind them. It’s a kill zone, and they’d assumed no one would be dumb enough to try to cross it in order to flank them. First Micah, and now this; she’s beginning to rethink that logic. Her scope catches someone crouched behind a low bush. “Alle can you deal with the asshole that stole my shields? Seven o’clock.”_

_With a twist of her hand, Alle pulls an annihilation field around her. “Gladly.” She glances up over the box, then dashes away from it, toward the bush._

_Nora settles back in, covering one half of the courtyard. “What brings you to ICT, Rabinowitz?”_

_“A slight difficulty following mainstream protocol,” he says, a smile evident in his voice._

_She glances over and watches him switch out his assault rifle for a sniper rifle. “As in ‘I don’t follow orders well’ or ‘I follow orders, just not how my CO intended’?”_

_“Second one.”_

_Smiling, Nora turns back to her rifle. Someone teleports straight into her scope and she takes the shot. Their glowing outline flickers out and, with a visibly-irritated sigh, she pulls off her helmet, nods in Nora’s general direction, and strolls off the field._ Rahiri, I., eliminated by Vakarian, N.

_“Okay, before you say anything,” Alle says._

_Nora looks over her shoulder to see Alle crouched down behind her box again, with another new person beside her. She’d wondered why she hadn’t seen anything in the elimination feed yet. She gestures for Alle to continue._

_“He made some very convincing points about us possibly needing a tech specialist.”_

_Whoever he is, he’s not wrong. And Vega never specified this was a battle royale to the last person standing – he just told them to gear up with target rounds and get the hell out of the shuttles. Three is better than two, but four’s even better. “And he is?”_

_“Carlos Torrini,” he says. “You got room for a fourth?”_

_Nora looks at him, and then glances around the pile of tires. She’d been eyeing an empty prefab structure about a hundred yards away, but the closest door is locked. All her decryption programs require direct physical access, and there is absolutely no cover by the door. “Sure. If you can get us into that building,” she points._

_Carlos breaks into a wide, crooked grin and opens his omnitool. “Give me ninety seconds.”_

***

Debriefed and showered, Nora walks out of the bathroom barefoot and rubs a towel at her hair. Three days of slogging through riverbed and muck made for an unfortunate olfactory experience when they all shed their armor in the locker room. Now, in her quarters, finally clean and in civilian clothing, she’s not quite so tired as she was when she got off the shuttle.

“Tell me you didn’t take all the hot water,” Alle says as she walks into the steamy bathroom.

“There’s still plenty,” she assures at her friend. She drapes the towel over the back of a chair and sits cross-legged on her bunk to check her messages.

Five from Quentus, all of which are memes and only two of which she understands. One from Nico, a funny bird video along with an update that he and his boyfriend have decided to move in together. 

Twelve from various teammates, and those can wait until the morning. She sends all social media updates directly to spam and adds a to do list reminder to fix her spam filter. 

Two article links from her dad, one titled _Boom Tomorrow: Increasing the Effective Range of Hand Grenades_ from the very-classified Council Defense Research Department she’s finally credentialed enough to know about, and the other a hilariously-scathing review of the new Blasto movie with a suggestion that they go see it the next time she’s on the Citadel (he’ll buy the popcorn). And one message from her mom, just checking in.

She checks the time – 8:45pm on the Citadel, not a bad time to call her parents.

A message pops up: a meeting invite from Vega:

> **TO:** ‘N3 Squad Leaders - Vega’ [Deckard, Ophelia; Vakarian, Nora; Wu, Jonah]
> 
> **SUBJECT:** Mission Briefing
> 
> **LOCATION:** Tereshkova Station, ICT Briefing Room
> 
> **TIME:** 1930, Sunday
> 
> **DESCRIPTION:** Next mission briefing. Deck, bring a notebook this time.

She sends it to her calendar, closes her email and dials a vidcall through to home. 

***

The vidcall rings, a happy little tune they’ve set for Nora, and Olivia slides across the hardwood floor in her socks, nearly careening into the wall, as she rushes across the apartment to answer. When she got home today, she’d set her omnitool in her office, closed the door behind it, and silenced all but the main comm unit so she could have a few uninterrupted hours of non-crisis time. With Garrus at a Council meeting, Nora off on a mission, and Quentus drinking his disappointment this weekend (and Nico dealing with him), she hadn’t anticipated that anyone might call home, or that she’d have to race down and across the entire apartment to answer. She taps _accept_ just before it goes to the mailbox.

Nora flickers into view. From her surroundings, Olivia gathers she’s on a ship, one of the small personnel transports the Alliance uses these days. She looks a little tired, but Olivia can’t see any injuries, at least from her shoulders up. Getting hurt in ICT is inevitable, she knows this better than anyone in their family, and she always prefers when Nora’s post-mission calls don’t come from the ship infirmary. 

“Hey, kid,” she says.

 _“Hi, Mom.”_ Nora’s shoulders settle and the tension in her jaw disappears. 

“How are you?” Olivia watches as Nora visibly relaxes. Though she doubts Nora remembers those days alone at all, abandonment still lingers around the edges of her subconscious, even over twenty years later. 

_“Good. I can’t tell you about it, but the mission went well.”_

Olivia smiles proudly. If she remembers the pacing right, Nora’s well on her way to N4 by the end of the year. James and Abby emphasize cooperation over solo missions whenever possible, and she has no doubt Nora’s N4 won’t be nearly as much of a mess as hers was. “That’s good to hear. Any idea when you’ll be back this way?” 

_“No clue. We’re headed back to Tereshkova; it looks like Vega’s got another op lined up.”_ Nora plays with her dog tags, sliding them back and forth on the chain as she talks. _“That’s part of why I called, actually. Dad said something about going to see the new Blasto, but I don’t know that I’ll be back before it’s been booed out of theaters.”_ She scrunches up her nose in half a pout. _“Is he home?”_

Olivia shakes her head. “I’ll let him know you called. He’s in a meeting – they’re voting on new Spectres tonight.”

Her eyes widen in excitement. _“Did Quentus make the final cut?”_

“Not this time,” she exhales sadly. Her heart aches for her eldest son: he’s wanted to be a Spectre since he first heard about them, even more so when he found out she used to be one. But Quentus is an unstoppable force when he wants something badly enough, and Olivia knows he’ll try again. And again. As many times as he needs. As soon as he wakes up in Nico’s guest room, having slept off the hangover, he’ll be planning.

Nora sighs. _“Poor guy. I’ll give him a call tomorrow.”_

“You might want to wait until the afternoon. There was something about triple-filtered black label scotch.” Some things are better not to even ask about.

A door opens to Nora’s right and she turns to talk quietly to a person just off screen. She turns back. _“I have to go. We’re gonna go raid the mess for food and then Alle has some hanar soap opera,”_ she makes a confused face and shrugs, _“she’s dragging me into.”_

Olivia laughs. “Tell Alle I said hi.” A muffled _hi Olivia!_ comes from somewhere offscreen. “And if that upcoming mission of yours happens to have a stop on the Citadel…”

 _“Believe me, I’ll be coming over for dinner.”_ Nora grins. _“Love you, Mom.”_

“I love you, too.”

***

 _“Admiral, she's a_ child _,” Olivia argues. “You cannot keep her locked up and isolated for her entire life.”_

_Hackett sighs. “I don’t disagree with you, Shepard. But she has unknown Cerberus technology inside of her. It’s dangerous, and we don't know what it does. And until we do, Alliance brass isn't comfortable letting her live among the general population.”_

_Olivia squares her shoulders and stares him down across his desk. “All your top scientists confirmed the chip is deactivated. It’s not emitting any signal, it shows no sign of energy or power whatsoever.” She holds up her hand when he opens his mouth to argue. “I’m not saying that it isn’t dangerous, or that she’ll never pose a threat. I’m saying that right now, she’s a scared little girl who wants nothing more than a hug.”_

_She pauses for half a moment before continuing. She hates what she’s about to say, but she and Garrus talked at length about how she was going to make their case; appealing to the Alliance’s sensitivity and maternal instinct alone was never going to work. “Keeping her locked up as a lab experiment is only going to breed resentment. If the chip does become a problem later and you’ve kept her in a cage, she’s going to be far more dangerous than if you’ve let her be a kid.” If you’ve let her be_ loved _. “The chip’s off for now,” she continues. “Garrus and I are willing and able, and happy, to take her in. And you know you can trust us.”_

_He sighs again, heavier this time, and scrubs a hand over his face as he leans back in his chair. “You two aren’t exactly out of the spotlight. What happens when some Cerberus agent sees news footage of your family and recognizes her?”_

_Olivia grinds her back teeth. They’ve been trying to get the press to leave them to their privacy, but she’s even higher-profile now than she was during the war, and Garrus is the sixth-ranking turian in the galaxy. Though the bodyguards Wrex provides help, keeping cameras off them and their kids is still an exercise in frustration at times. “She’s four,” she says. “She was born on that station. Everyone on it is dead. Her biological parents are both dead. There’s likely not anyone_ to _recognize her.”_

_Holding up his hands in defeat, Hackett gives in. “I will bring it up with the others,” he says. “But,” he softens his voice, and she knows that it’s now Steven talking to Olivia, not Admiral Hackett talking to Captain Shepard, “are you going to be able to give her up to us if something does happen?”_

_She squares her shoulders, looks him right in the eye, and lies. “Yes.”_

***

Nora drops into her seat at the large wooden briefing table opposite Deck. They docked at Tereshkova this morning, and she’s spent most of the day shopping for a new visor. Everywhere she tried had the one she wants on backorder; she’ll have to talk to the Alliance’s Ariake rep and maybe flaunt her last name to pull some strings. She pokes her straw through the lid of her iced tea lemonade, swirls the ice around, and takes a sip. It’s absolute heaven, especially after a week of drinking only water and bad Alliance-manufactured coffee. She sniffs the air and squints at the foil-covered package in Deck’s hand. “When did they get a falafel place?”

Deck shrugs, chewing a bite of her pita. “Okay,” she says when Jonah walks in, “I have been coming here for five years and have never found the McDonald’s. Rahiri drew me a damn _map_ last time, and I still couldn’t find it.”

Jonah smirks as he takes a seat two chairs down from Nora. He opens his takeout bag and offers Deck first dibs on his fries. “It’s on the Section 4 docks, around the corner from the quarian fortuneteller. Who, by the way,” he takes his fries back before Deck can eat them all, “is still convinced I died two years ago.”

“Hold up,” Nora says. “You paid fifty credits to a guy – who you _already_ knew was going to tell you that you were dead – to tell you that you were dead? Which you are very clearly not?” She tears a piece off her soft pretzel and pops it into her mouth. While the pretzel is totally delicious, she’ll need to get actual dinner after the briefing before they all land in a bar.

“Yeah, man,” Deck stretches over the table and snags another fry. “If you’re giving money away, I’ll take it.”

“He’s a very sad man who never succeeded in his pilgrimage, but he won’t take a handout. So I pay him fifty credits, he throws some rocks on the table, tells me I’m dead, and he gets to eat dinner tonight that isn’t protein paste.” He moves his fries out of reach and back to safety.

Deck leans back and kicks her feet up onto the chair next to her. “You are so nice,” she points a stolen fry at him, “it’s disgusting.”

Nora catches Jonah’s eye and smiles. She always gives a few credit chits to the kids who hang out on the docks, and they both know Deck does the same in the salarian districts where she buys her snacks. The war ended over thirty years ago, before any of them were born, but scars are everywhere.

The doors swish open and Commander Vega enters. “I’m stealing you from leave; don’t get up,” Vega says when the three lieutenants move to stand. He takes up his position near the head of the table, and stares at Jonah’s food. “Alright,” he sighs, “I _live_ here. _Where_ is the McDonald’s?”

“Section 4 docks, by the quarian fortune teller, apparently,” Deck says. “But I think he’s full of shit.”

“There’s a station directory,” Jonah says flatly.

Biting back a laugh, Nora keeps quiet on the issue: she’s only ever found the McDonald’s by accident, and never anywhere near the Section 4 docks. She jabs her straw at the ice and takes another sip.

Vega blinks at his soldiers, shakes his head, and then kills the lights. He activates the display at the center of the table, and a blue holographic galaxy map flickers into existence. “We’ve got two missions: reaper cults and Cerberus. Any preference what we talk about first?”

“Is there a third option?” Deck asks around a mouthful of falafel. 

“Nope.”

“Reaper cults,” Nora says, when neither of the others says anything.

“Right,” Vega says, and taps at the control panel on the wall. “We’ve got reports from both Omega and the quarians of suspicious activity coming and going from the Skepsis relay.” He focuses in on the Sigurd’s Cradle cluster.

The map zooms in past the cluster and to a star system. “It was enough for the quarians to send scouts. They tracked a ship to Psi Tophet, where they found evidence of reaper cult activity. Normally, we’d just keep an eye on it and leave it alone: they’ve largely faded to the edges of the galaxy and keep to themselves.”

Though Deck’s still lounging back in her chair with her feet kicked up on the seat next to her, Nora sees the tension taking hold in her shoulders. Her hand shakes as she sets her sandwich down. They all have their ghosts. 

“But?” Deck prompts, voice tight and flat.

“But, twelve cargo ships have gone missing in the last eight months after departing Omega.”

“Things go missing around Omega all the time,” Jonah points out. “Why is this weird?”

Vega taps the panel, and flight paths overlay the galaxy map. “Because all their trajectories required a relay jump at Skepsis, and they were all carrying relatively large hauls of eezo.”

Jonah lifts his eyebrows. “That’s worth investigating.”

“Alliance brass thought so, too. Deck, I know this is an uncomfortable topic for you, but you have firsthand knowledge –”

“Not willingly,” she mutters.

“– of how these cults work. You’d be able to notice things the rest of your squad won’t. I’d like you leading this one.”

Nora watches as Deck takes a deep breath and shoves the tension away when she exhales. It’s impressive. She wishes she was that quick at calming herself whenever Cerberus is up on the monitors.

“Sure,” she says, cracking her neck.

“You’ll take Kennedy, Hayes, and Starkhov. This is _recon only_. I don’t want you engaging. Hopefully it’s nothing.”

“Twelve missing eezo cargo ships, and reaper cults near the Leviathan homeworld,” Nora says. “I think we can _hope_ it’s nothing all we want.”

Deck points at her, agreeing. “If this is supposed to be recon only, can I have Rahiri instead? Kennedy is _not_ good at stealth.”

Vega shakes his head. “No, Rahiri’s on a mission with Chen.”

The three lieutenants look at each other, and then back to Vega.

“You can’t just leave that there, sir,” Deck says. “Irene and Isaac have been at each other’s throats since the day they met. What the hell do you have them doing together?”

“A classified op, for which both their skills were uniquely suited.”

A moment of silence, and then a collective nod of comprehension. “Assassination,” they say in unison.

Vega clears his throat before any of them can ask for details he can’t give. “You’ll head to Haignere Station, where you’ll meet up with an Omega scout ship that’s establishing a listening station in the Pylos Nebula. They’ll take you to Psi Tophet, at which point you’ll leave in an FTL shuttle and proceed on your own.”

“And we trust Aria T’Loak to follow through with this?” Jonah asks, one eyebrow raised high. He crumples up the foil his burger came in and drops it into the grease-spotted paper bag.

“It’s her eezo shipments that’ve gone missing,” Vega says. “She has a vested interest in this. It’s financial, but no less legit.” He looks at Deck and tosses her an OSD. “Operation Anubis leaves in three days.”

Deck catches the drive, and nods. “Understood.”

“Now,” Vega says, changing the display, “Cerberus.”

Nora swallows, her mouth suddenly dry. If she even still has the memory, it’s dim and buried deep. But she knows what happened, and that alone is enough to conjure up images of a station full of the dead, and a tiny scared toddler tucked up underneath a desk amidst the carnage. 

“The galactic intelligence community has assumed for a while that Cerberus is under new, consolidated leadership, but other than an increase in organized attacks, we haven’t found any real proof. However, the Alliance has come across some new information.”

Though the chip hasn’t shown even the slightest hint of energy since it was deactivated, and though she’s taken anatomy courses that taught her it’s impossible, some days she swears she can feel it buzzing in her head. She takes another bite to try to settle her nerves, but her pretzel’s cold now.

“How?” Jonah asks.

“Shadow Broker,” Vega says.

Nora presses her lips together to hold back a smile, despite her mood. She doubts even the highest of Alliance Command knows who Vega’s wife really is. She’s used Liara’s intel herself on a handful of missions, and even once spent a few days on a Broker base hiding out from pirates. Her team keeps pestering her how she knows the Shadow Broker well enough to have access to a base, but she’s gotten very good at shrugging silently. So has Vega. 

“The Broker’s intel referenced several Cerberus bases. Scouts checked it out – all abandoned, but information on a server led us to a planet in the Faia system of the Ismar Frontier.” He taps on the interface and the map zooms to the other side of the galaxy, highlighting the second planet. A little label pops up, _Zorya_.

Deck’s chair squeaks as she sits up to stare at the map. “That is the ass-end of nowhere.”

“That’s probably why they chose it,” Jonah says. 

Vega nods. “Zorya used to be Blue Suns headquarters, but the Reapers wiped everyone out. Galactic Affairs rated the system destroyed and abandoned, so it never got any rebuilding attention. Based on the apparent age of the base, we assume Cerberus moved in a few years after the Aquila relay went back online,” he says. “It’s a mid-level research facility, but it’s active, and therefore the best lead we have to find their actual headquarters.” 

He zooms in on the planet, focusing on a compound deep in the jungle. “We have blueprints, and their guard rotations and main door access codes as of two weeks ago. Your job is to infiltrate the compound, grab whatever data you find, and then blow it. Captured Cerberus agents are a perk if you can, but thirty years underground probably hasn’t eased their paranoia.”

Nora takes a slow, quiet, deep breath. And then another. _Good air in, bad air out._ After three, she’s settled enough that she can focus on participating in the briefing. She wipes her clammy palms against her thighs.

Jonah taps on the glass panel built into the table, activating the interface. He calls up data on Zorya. “It rains 98% of the time on that part of the planet, and the only intel we have on plants and wildlife is from the vorcha. Which obviously makes it reliable.” He looks up. “Apparently there are mutated pyjaks and something with very long thorns.”

“We’ve been worse places,” Nora shrugs, calling up her own interface.

Sighing, Jonah shakes his head. “We need to stop saying that.”

“Well,” Deck says, sliding her straw up and down through the lid so it squeaks, “we have.”

“As long as those things with long thorns aren’t trying to _digest_ Torrini, I think we’re okay,” Nora says. The tightness in her shoulders starts to relax as she has something concrete to focus on. 

Vega clears his throat. “Wu and Vakarian, you’ll take Montgomery, Rabinowitz, Torrini, and Carter.” He pauses. “Even though all of Chimera’s going on this, I’m putting Wu in charge. Vakarian, you’ll be second.” He lifts an eyebrow ever so slightly, a silent inquiry for them to speak now on the matter of command or forever hold their peace.

Normally, she’d argue. Chimera’s her team, and has been from the very beginning. But they’re going into an active Cerberus facility – not just a small cell, an actual fully-functional base – and she probably has no business going on this mission in the first place, even less business leading it. 2IC is fine by her. She nods.

“We’re dubbing this one Operation Grigori. You leave for Haliat-Gemini in four days. You’ll pick up one of our new stealth FTL shuttles from the shipyard, a turian stealth cruiser will take you to the Ismar Frontier, and you’re on your own from there. I want an infiltration plan _before_ you leave.” He tosses Jonah an OSD. “Here’s all the intel.”

“Yes, sir,” Jonah says. He fumbles the catch and has to duck under the table to pick it up. Deck rolls her eyes while Nora bites her lip, holding back a grin.

“Alright, dismissed,” Vega turns the lights back on. “Go have fun.”

The three of them stand, salute, collect their trash, and head toward the door.

“Vakarian, hold up.”

“I’ll meet you there,” she tells Deck and Jonah, and turns around. “Yes, sir?”

He waits until the others are gone and the door’s closed. “Drop the _sir_.”

She nods. Vega’s her commanding officer, but he’s also known her since she was a kid. Though most of the time they’re Lieutenant Vakarian and Commander Vega, sometimes they need to talk as Nora and James. As weird as it is for her to be ordered to jump out of a dropship six miles aboveground by someone who used to braid her hair, she bets it’s even weirder for him. “What’s up?”

He looks at the display, still showing the Cerberus compound, and then back at her, brow furrowed in concern. “You okay with this one?” 

Nora watches the blue hologram slowly spin, giving a full aerial view. “Yes,” she says, more confidently than she feels. Her previous Cerberus missions have always been at a temporary location or a base they stole from someone else - never on their own ground. The chip itches. Not for the first time, she wants to claw inside her skull and rip it out.

“You sure? I can swap you with Kennedy. Deck won’t mind.”

She studies the map. They’ll need a significant amount of stealth to even get into the facility, and once inside it’s all tight corridors and blind corners. What the team needs is a sniper and non-concussive grenades, not a claustrophobic vanguard. “Yeah,” she says quietly, “I’m sure.” She looks back at him and offers him a smile. “Thanks, though.”

“And you’re good seconding?”

She lets out a short, sharp laugh. “ _Please_ put Jonah in charge.”

He holds her gaze for half a moment longer, and then nods. “Alright, _sobrina_. Eezo job takes off in three days, if you change your mind.”

“Got it, boss.” 

“Have a drink for me. I’m here all night doing paperwork,” he sighs. “And stop having Torrini as bait, would you? Command’s starting to wonder a few things.”

Nora grins, and it’s bigger, more genuine than the one she gave him just a minute before. “I’ve already heard it from him. He’s off bait duty for the foreseeable future, don’t worry.”

He waves her out the door. “Enjoy leave.”

She offers him a casual salute. “See you in a few days.”


	3. there's truth that lives and truth that dies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jonah puts up with a lot, Nora tells her teammates about The Thing, and Garrus makes an appearance.

“Problem Number One,” Jonah says, writing _Problem #1_ on the board at the front of the room, “is the AA guns. According to these schematics - “

“Which could possibly be out of date,” Micah points out from the couch in the back of the room.

“Yeah,” Nora says, doodling on her tablet, “but we’re ignoring that.” Tucking her feet up underneath her, she accidentally kicks Micah, and whispers an apology. He gives her a small smile in response, then pokes her in the side when she isn’t looking. She sticks her tongue out at him.

Jonah clears his throat. “ _According to these schematics_ , they have a battery of AA guns here, here, and here,” he circles three locations, each about five miles away from the base. “And on the roof.”

A chorus of ideas arises from his fellow soldiers. “Hacking them would be easiest.” “EMP cannon would do the trick.” “Cloak the shuttle.” “Hayes is a pretty good shot, he could take ‘em out.” “Hayes isn’t coming and, anyway, I take offense at that.” “Sorry Nora, but you know he’s better than you.” 

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Can we please get all the problems on the board first before you throw solutions at me?”

Alle, sitting on the floor in front of Nora, slurps the remainder of her soda through her straw, and waves her hand through the air: _continue_.

“Problem Number Two,” _Problem #2_ goes on the board, “is the base’s shield. We’ll also have to land pretty far back, at least here,” he marks on the map about three miles away, between the AA guns and the base. “The jungle’s too dense closer in, and landing farther out means that our exit is that much farther away.”

Loud music starts to play, sounding spine-gratingly tinny out of omnitool speakers. _Love beyond moons, love beyond stars, love will take you anywhere_ – Rachel gets it turned off before the chorus continues, but not fast enough to keep it from getting stuck in Nora’s head.

“And Montgomery will fix her buggy music app before the mission,” Jonah says. 

“I don’t know, man, Kara & the Destinies is pretty solid mission music,” Carlos says with a wide grin. 

Rachel throws her stylus at him. It bounces off his shoulder. 

Nora catches Jonah’s eye, and jumps back in with the briefing. “While there is some valid concern about snakes during that hike, the shield is a very real problem. It surrounds the entire facility, and if we can’t get it down, we can’t get in. It’s on a cycling frequency, and anything that tries to penetrate it outside of these standard entry points,” she draws little x marks around the base, “gets fried. Predictably, said standard entry points are highly guarded.”

Rachel twists in her chair and looks over her shoulder at Nora. “Is there any chance this is one of those shields where if something’s moving slow enough or fast enough it gets through?” 

“No such luck.”

“Problem Number 3,” he doesn’t write on the board this time, “is Vakarian.”

Four sets of eyes turn to stare at her.

“Yeah,” she says slowly. After she told Jonah - after Vega strongly suggested she do so \- the two of them talked at length about whether to tell the others; ultimately, they decided it was better they have some mild trust issues than the worst happens and they aren’t prepared. “Cerberus put a control chip in my head when I was a kid. The Alliance fried it and it’s been dead for over twenty years, but it’s there, and a thing you guys need to know about, just in case.”

Carlos pushes himself up out of his inelegant sprawl across the bean bag and sits up straight. “Dumb question.” He looks first at Jonah, then Nora. “Why’s she coming with us?”

Rachel looks up from her omnitool, raises an eyebrow, and points at Carlos, silently seconding his question and sentiment.

“Do _you_ want to go into an unknown situation without her covering your dumb I’m-gonna-punch-the-giant-mech ass?” Alle asks, sitting up straight. 

Appreciating the backup, Nora brushes her hand against her friend’s shoulder. Alle’s known about the chip for years, since a sleepover in high school when they broke into Alle’s parents’ alcohol cabinet. Nora discovered that vodka utterly annihilates her personal and mental barriers, and Alle discovered her best friend was walking around with a control chip. Pancakes the next morning had been a little awkward: Alle brimming with questions, and Nora having answers to none of them.

“Not particularly, but that’s – “

“Well, then shut up,” she cuts him off.

Carlos huffs. “That’s not my point, Alle.” His eyes narrow and, when it’s clear he isn’t going to be interrupted again, he continues. “Nora, I love and trust you, but why did _anyone_ think you coming on this mission was a good idea?”

All Nora can do is shrug. Carlos can do the logistics just as well as she can, and come to the same conclusion she did: no one else is available. Chen and Rahiri are on their own mission, and the four on the eezo job are clandestine experts. _Because I’m your only option if you want a full team_ isn’t the greatest answer, but it’s the truth.

“Vega made the call,” Jonah says, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “And until he unmakes the call, we’re going with it. Anyone unwilling to take this mission if Vakarian’s on the team – speak now, or forever shut the hell up.”

Nora holds her breath, but no one says a word.

“Right,” Jonah says. “Hopefully, it doesn’t become an issue. But we both thought you should know, in case it does. And that information is classified, not to be shared outside this room.”

“You got it,” Carlos says, looking straight at Nora.

Rachel nods, and Micah squeezes her shoulder. Alle leans her head back on the couch and smiles upside down.

Nora takes a shaky breath and manages a small smile for them. “Thanks, guys.”

With a single nod, Jonah ends that discussion. “Okay. I’m looking for solutions to Problem Number One, and Problem Number Two.”

“I have a solution to Problem Number One,” Rachel says. Long used to Jonah’s precision-like and orderly briefings, she waits for him to acknowledge her before she continues. “Zorya is about to go through an annual meteor shower.” She taps on her omnitool – silencing another snippet of music with a sigh – and projects the image up onto the wall behind Jonah. “It’s major, so they’ll have to turn off their automatic firing solution. If we bring the shuttle in on a trajectory that matches the meteors, and kill the power until we need it to land, we should be able to escape detection.”

Carlos pushes his dark hair out of his face. “Even powered down, isn’t a shuttle kind of obvious on scanners?” He frowns at his hair, too long to be practical and too short to pull out of the way.

Nora wonders how long it’ll be before he asks her to give him a haircut in the back of a shuttle. Again.

“Normally, yes. But according to the intel,” Rachel continues, scrolling through the briefing on her tablet, “their manual sensors aren’t state-of-the-art; it’s basically radar with some simplistic energy imaging. Their defenses rely mostly on their AA guns, the shield, and being in the middle of the jungle on a planet no one bothered rebuilding. If we go in at night, at the peak of the shower, with engines powered down, we’ll read as just another meteor. We’re definitely screwed if someone manages to catch us in night-vision goggles, but the likelihood of that is _very_ small.”

Jonah turns to his board and writes _fake being a meteor_ underneath _Problem #1_. “Good work,” he says. “Anyone have a solution to Problem Number Two?”

“How does the shield work?” Carlos asks. “They’ve gotta take it down to let people in and out.” 

“Did you read the mission briefing?”

“No.”

Jonah’s jaw clenches. 

“It’s in eight pieces, like a pie,” Nora says, before the throbbing vein in Jonah’s forehead bursts. “Each of the checkpoints controls an individual section of the shield, and they take it down as necessary. The whole thing doesn’t need to come down to let people in.”

“So Nora takes out the guards, we steal their access cards, take the shield down and run in,” Alle suggests. “Why is this an issue?”

Sighing loudly, Jonah drops his tablet onto the table. “I write these mission briefings for a reason, guys.”

Nora presses her lips together in a wry smile. She learned long ago that half her team doesn’t do well with assigned reading, and shortly thereafter gave up trying to make her briefings have any ounce of structure and organization; she’d warned Jonah not to count on Alle or Carlos even skimming the briefing he sent out. “Because the pieces are all networked to a central control room. Even if they don’t require permission before lowering their section, someone’s definitely going to notice once it’s down. They can’t answer if they’re dead, and we don’t have nearly enough intel to bullshit our way through that conversation.”

“Back to the meteor shower,” Micah says, finally speaking up. “What are the chances a meteor makes it through the atmosphere, doesn’t completely burn up on entry, and smashes the control panel hard enough to deactivate the shield?”

Rachel blinks at him. “Anything’s possible, but we can’t predict or control that.”

He shrugs. “Don’t have to. A well-placed drill grenade could make a passable meteor crater, especially in the dark. Would also take out the guards, if they’re standing close enough.”

“We need to take out the guards first,” Alle says, and Nora peers over her friend’s shoulder to watch as she draws diagrams. “It’s really specific positioning to blow the panel completely _and_ look like a believable impact crater.” She taps on her tablet and sends her sketchy diagram up onto the display screen.

“Good work,” Jonah says, and writes _more meteors_ underneath _Problem #2_.

“Before we move on,” Carlos says, “can we go back to Problem Number Three?” He sits up and turns so he’s facing the whole room. 

Nora freezes. Naively, she thought they were done with this – that everyone agreeing to _forever shut the hell up_ meant that they were, if not okay with it, at least at peace with it being a fact. But she’s known about it for twelve years, and she isn’t anywhere near at peace with it. They’ve known for five minutes.

“What are your concerns?” Jonah asks.

“We’re all hoping that nothing happens,” he says gently. “But if something does – what do you want us to do?” he directs his question at Nora. 

Nora blinks at him, and then stares down at her hands. She’d never considered that. She doesn’t feel like she _can_ consider that. Considering that makes it a _possibility_. Though she wants to give Carlos an answer, her mind’s gone completely blank. There’s nothing – no solution, no action, not even an in-poor-taste-and-not-actually-that-funny joke.

There’s nothing, except for the obvious answer. And perhaps the _only_ answer.

When the silence turns awkward, Nora sighs. “Neutralize me,” she says softly. “If it’s clear that I’ve become a liability or a threat, knock me out. I’d rather Micah punch me and deal with the concussion than hurt any of you guys.” She pauses. “Though I’d appreciate it if you also took the effort to haul my ass out of there.”

“I wouldn’t punch you,” Micah says, as if this were any other tactical conversation. “There’s a spot, right there,” he lightly sets his fingers just underneath her jaw, “poke hard enough and you’re out like a light.”

Nora can’t help it, she bursts out laughing. “Thanks,” she says, giving him a wide grin. 

He flashes her a warm smile in return and drops his hand to her knee for a moment.

She takes a breath. “I know this blows, but I appreciate you guys having my back.” The other five give her a thumbs up, or a nod, or a smile, and she exhales slowly. Nothing other than finishing the mission will calm her down completely, but she feels a little better for everyone’s support.

“I hate to do this,” Rachel says, breaking the moment, “but I might have a Problem Number Four.” She calls up a topographical map. “The area we’re landing in is thick jungle, at night, with mutated pyjaks, four varieties of poisonous –”

“Venomous,” Alle corrects.

“ _Whatever_ snakes, what looks like the occasional boiling mud pit, and it’s also the rainy season. That’s a nightmare of a hike.”

“We’ve been worse places,” Nora says. She grins at Jonah, who glowers at her.

“Carnivorous plant planet.”

“Toxic mud moon.”

“That desert with the acid flash flood.”

“Pygmy squirrels that ate holes in our tents. While we were in them.”

Exasperated, Jonah groans. “ _Enough_. Unfortunately, there’s no great place to land closer. We’ll all just have to watch our step. You’re the medic; bring antivenin. And extra fuel for the flamethrower – fire kills everything.”

“Except for the giant murderplant,” Carlos mutters.

Micah stares at Carlos. “Are you _ever_ going to let that go?”

“ _It tried to eat my entire arm_ ,” he says, enunciating every word. “No.”

“We had knives,” Nora says. “You were _fine_.”

With a huff, Carlos slides a little further down, now halfway on the floor. “I hate both of you,” he grumbles.

 _Love beyond moons, love beyond_ – Rachel growls and glares at her omnitool. 

“ _Thank you_ ,” Jonah says. “We’re done. I’ll have an infiltration plan ready by the time we leave tomorrow. Go be somewhere else. _Please_.”

***

 _They’ve been brought to a small room, just a couch, two chairs, a coffee table, and a dying plant in the corner beside the window. They already heard the report: Chakwas’ and Miranda’s assessments were correct_ – _it’s too risky to operate, but the chip is dead. Nora is otherwise a very healthy, very normal, little girl._

_And Olivia convinced the Alliance to let them adopt her. Garrus brushes his hand against his wife’s as the other door opens, revealing Nora and an Alliance counselor. Nora stares at her feet as she shuffles in, and she looks about as unhappy as one small human can look._

_The counselor gives her hand a squeeze and bends down to whisper something to her._

_Somewhat reluctantly, Nora looks up. Her eyes widen, and she lets out a small gasp when she sees Olivia. She drops the counselor’s hand and runs toward Olivia as fast as her short legs can take her._

_Smiling, Olivia crouches down to Nora’s level and catches her as she flings herself into a hug. “Hey,” she says softly, wrapping her arms tight around the small girl. “You okay?”_

_Nora buries her face in Olivia’s shoulder. Though she whimpers a little, she nods. Garrus watches as Nora almost melts into Olivia’s embrace. He’s long sworn that Olivia’s hugs have magical powers, and Nora seems just as vulnerable to that comforting magic as he and their sons are._

_“I’m so sorry I had to leave,” Olivia whispers as she rubs Nora’s back. “But I promise I’m not leaving ever again.”_

_Garrus smiles as he watches the two of them. His heart swells, just as it did five years ago when they were introduced to the two small boys who would become their sons._

_Olivia presses a kiss to Nora’s temple. She looks up at the Alliance counselor. “Can you give us a minute, please?”_

_The woman nods and shuts the door behind her._

_Olivia effortlessly lifts Nora as she stands up. She settles her against her hip. “I want you to meet someone.”_

_Nora looks up and opens her eyes, following where Olivia points. She takes in a short breath and her eyes widen when she sees him_ – _but not in fear. Garrus has seen fear on enough humans to recognize it, even in a child. No, Nora’s eyes are full of curiosity. He gives her a little wave._

_“That’s Garrus,” Olivia says. “And if you’re okay with it,” she looks at him and smiles a smile that still makes his knees a bit weak, and then focuses back on Nora, “we’d like to be your mom and dad.”_

_Nora looks at her, and then looks at him. Back to Olivia, back to him. After a moment, she wriggles until Olivia sets her down. Slowly, she walks the few steps over to him. She looks up with the same wide, curious brown eyes and lifts up her arms expectantly._

_Olivia stifles a laugh. Carefully, Garrus picks Nora up. She’s different than their boys, a little softer and wider, and it takes a few seconds to shift and get her comfortable. But once she’s settled, safe and secure in his arms, he smiles at her._

_“Hi,” he says quietly. The same warmth he felt the first time he held his other two children, and the warmth that’s only grown in the five years since, brightens in his chest. She stares at him, almost through him. A curl falls into her face and he pushes it back, brushing his talon against her cheek._

_Nora blinks._

_“Is that a yes?” Garrus asks. He looks over at Olivia for confirmation_ – _maybe there’s a method of human toddler communication he hasn’t read about. Olivia shrugs, but a smile grows across her face._

 _If it is a yes, Olivia will stay here with her for a few days while the Alliance creates all of Nora’s paperwork and runs a final battery of tests on the chip. He’ll bring Nico and Quentus by tomorrow to introduce her; they’re already so excited about having a little sister, and he’s promised to help them put glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling tonight. If it isn’t_ – _well, he honestly can’t imagine any way that it isn’t a yes._

_Nora blinks once more, and rests her head against his carapace._

_He looks from his daughter, settled in his arms with her eyes closed, to his wife, standing in front of him with sparkling eyes, and smiles._

***

When she gets back to her quarters that night – new visor, strawberry-orange smoothie, and takeout noodles securely in hand – Nora drops into a chair. She’d been looking forward to having some time to herself, but now wishes she’d accepted the invitation to join Alle for dinner with her parents. The apartment they share on Tereshkova is tucked in a corner of the Alliance’s military housing section, away from the crowds and noise. She’s left with the gentle hum of the station’s power grid, and her thoughts.

She was _fine_ about the mission. She was _fine_ about the control chip. She was _fine_ about Cerberus. She was _fine_ about the control chip in her head during this Cerberus mission. At least, she’d convinced herself she was fine. And then Carlos asked what she wanted them to do if everything _wasn’t_ fine.

And then the idea that things might _not_ be fine became a reality. A reality she’s been trying very, very hard to ignore for _years_.

While there’s still time for her to head to Shenzhou and catch up with Deck’s team, there isn’t enough time to get someone else back from Shenzhou to Haliat-Gemini in time to make their departure. The meteor shower’s window of opportunity is too narrow to wait around. If she leaves, her team will be going in one man down.

One big-enough-problem-to-mention-in-the-briefing man down, but a man down all the same. 

Micah could make the shot to take out the shield checkpoint guards easily enough, and Carlos is a decent enough grenadier in a pinch, but it isn’t just a matter of hastily replicating her skillset: she’s an extra body, an extra gun, an extra set of eyes. 

Sighing, she stands up and moves to the table so she can eat dinner without dropping every second noodle onto her lap. She puts on the latest episode of _Real World 7: Citadel Redux_ – she’s missed a few episodes, but this season hasn’t been that great anyway – and eats her dinner while watching a barely-legal batarian try to pick a fight with an asari matriarch about washing dishes. The matriarch silently puts the batarian in a stasis field and walks away. Half a minute later, she comes back, and sticks a handwritten sign to the batarian’s chest: _I am in Time Out because I didn’t respect my elders._

That at least explains one of the memes Quentus sent her.

The episode ends, and Nora dumps her trash into the matter recycler. She exhales loudly in the quiet room, so much restless energy running through her veins she feels like she might vibrate out of her own skin. 

She tidies up the living room, throws out everything unidentifiable in the fridge (which is most of its contents), takes out all the trash, starts a load of laundry, and even cleans her gun. All of it takes less than an hour, and when she puts her rifle, all shiny and clean, back together, she has to grit her teeth to keep from screaming when she can’t get the scope back in place by the third try. 

With a sharp exhale, Nora forces herself to put the scope down and walk away from the weapons bench before she gets so worked up she breaks something. 

_Good air in, bad air out_. Four deep breaths, and she’s settled enough to think clearly. Not settled enough to be calm, but at least not on the verge of smashing an extremely expensive custom-ordered piece of equipment. Progress. 

A quick glance at the clock tells her it’s still daytime on the Citadel. She opens up her computer and starts her vidcall program, dialing a private and highly-secure number. It connects almost instantly.

_“Councilor Vakar- oh, hello Nora.”_

“Hi, Kyra.” Nora smiles at her father’s assistant. Kyra’s been around as long as she can remember. “Is my dad available?”

_“Yes. One moment.”_

“Thanks,” she says, even though Kyra’s already blinked out, replaced by the _please hold_ screen.

_“Well, this is a surprise.”_

Nora feels like a weight’s been lifted from her shoulders. She smiles. “Hi, Dad.”

He returns the smile, and then tilts his head. _“Are you okay?”_

“Freaking out a little, about a mission. Do you have a minute to talk me through something?” She tries not to call him in the middle of the day, but she has twelve hours to make her decision. If she calls her mother, she’ll get nice advice about following her gut, which won’t actually help. If she calls either of her brothers, they’ll tell her to stop being stupid, and to bail and go with the eezo job. Her father will tell her something useful, he always has.

_“Always. What’s going on?”_

She takes a deep breath. “Mission A is infiltrating a Cerberus research base and,” she taps on her head. “We don’t know what the research is. I could be a liability.”

He nods. _“Alright. What’s Mission B?”_

“Mission B is a non-combat recon mission that isn’t much more than _show up, see what happens_. Vega wants me on the Cerberus mission, but gave me the option of switching. Like an idiot, I told him I’d do it before I really thought about it...and before I told my team about it and before one of them asked me what I wanted them to do in case, you know,” she gestures, knowing better than to tempt fate. “And now that’s kind of all I can think about and I’m freaking out and really regretting telling Vega I’d do this.” She pauses and takes a controlled breath to slow down. “But if I switch now, we can’t get someone from Mission B to join. There’s a timing thing.”

He leans forward and his mandibles flicker in thought. _“So, your options are: go on the Cerberus mission, possibly putting yourself and your team in danger if they’re doing the wrong kind of research. Or leave your team one man down on a job that needed an extra man.”_

Nora grimaces. Lousy choices all around. “Yeah. What do you think?”

He’s silent for a long moment as he thinks about it. The silence made her antsy as a kid, but now she can practically see the wheels turning in his head. _“As your dad, I’d tell you to say screw your team and not walk into an unknown Cerberus research lab. But,”_ he pauses, looks away from the screen, and then looks back. 

He suddenly looks so much older. 

_“As a soldier, I’d tell you not to leave your team one gun short because of something that_ might _happen.”_

With a quiet sigh, Nora nods. The weight settles back on her shoulders, but it’s a calmer, more resigned weight this time. It’s a terrible decision, and it’s the right one. “That’s what I thought. I just needed to hear someone else say it.” 

_“Are you worried about the chip?”_

“More than normal, yeah.” She runs her open palm through her hair and over the back of her head. She’s been looking for years, and she’s never found a scar.

_“Here’s some unsolicited advice from an old turian who once spent some time on a Cerberus ship: you can’t anticipate their every move, no matter how much you try. So, focus on the moves you can anticipate: how to get in, disable security, get what you need, and get out.”_

“And if shit happens?”

_“You have your entire team behind you.”_

Nora smiles, and her anxiety starts to melt into background noise: low and present, but ignorable. “Thanks, Dad.”

His mandibles flick out in a smile, and then his eyes glance down to the bottom corner of his screen. _“I have to go, I’m sorry.”_

She nods. It’s amazing she even caught him. “It’s okay.”

_“And if Blasto’s gone by the time you get back, I will pull some strings and make sure we get to see it in a theater.”_

“Totally responsible use of power, Dad.”

 _“Hey,”_ he says, _“if I can’t leverage it to see a terrible movie with my daughter, what’s the point of being councilor?”_

Laughing, Nora shakes her head. “Go to your meeting.”

_“Good luck on your mission. I love you.”_

“Love you, too.”


	4. there are too many prophets here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a brother makes an appearance, the team does some traveling, and there are several Talks.

_“Gentlemen,” Olivia says sharply. “I understand tensions are high, but - “_

_“That is our territory, and you,” Minister Taigan bravely steps into Wrex’s personal space, “are invading it.”_

_Wrex bares his teeth and towers over the quarian. He growls._

_Olivia steps into the slight space between them and braces her hands on their chests to physically push them apart. Wrex doesn’t move, but Taigan wavers and takes a step back. “_ Neither _of you are going to win this argument if you start a fistfight in my conference room. Got it?”_

_She glares first at Taigan, then at Wrex, and waits for a nod from both before she steps back. “Sit,” she orders, and, when they don’t, raises an eyebrow.  The eyebrow goes a little bit higher, and they finally sit; she joins them at the head of the conference table. “Now, Minister Taigan. I understand the quarians’ historical claim to the system. Is there anything of cultural significance on this former colony today?”_

_“It was ours,” he snaps._

_“True as that may be, it didn’t answer my question.” She levels a steady glare at him._

_Before Taigan can answer, the conference room door opens. Olivia spins around to level her glare on the intruder. Blake sizes up the situation and hesitates in the doorway._

_“What?” she snaps at her assistant. She’s fresh out of patience for the day, and it’s just now lunchtime._

_“Sorry, ma’am. Your son is calling to talk to you?”_

_Nico’s working on a top-secret project on Palaven nowhere near a combat zone, and Quentus got home yesterday for a week of leave. Nothing from either of them could possibly be an emergency. “I’ll call him back in a few hours,” she says, glancing at the two men and the wooden table barely keeping the peace between them._

_“Yeah,” Blake says. “He, uh, Quentus said something about an old friend from home?”_

_Olivia’s vision snaps sideways a little bit. The last time she heard that phrase, it was followed by Garrus telling her his dad had a heart attack. She looks warily back at the other two._

_“Go,” Wrex says. “I promise I won’t eat him.”_

_“Thank you,” she says, scraping her chair as she stands. She rushes out with as much decorum as she can, ignoring Taigan calling for assurances to his safety._

_Castis is fine, Garrus talked to him this morning; he’s happily tending to his garden on Palaven. Her mom and Zaeed came over for dinner the other night, and are both in perfect health. Solana’s running war games somewhere in the Kepler Verge. Nico’s in a secure, hidden building in Cipritine. Quentus’ plans for the day included laundry and meeting his sister for lunch. Garrus would’ve called her himself, and his security team would’ve called if he couldn’t. Which leaves –_

_“Nora’s fine,” Quentus says as soon as the vidcall loads._

_Olivia exhales loudly and sits down heavily in her chair. Her heart pounds so loud it almost drowns out her son. She blinks, taking in his background. “Why are you in a hospital?”_ Fine _doesn’t usually involve a hospital._

_“She’s fine,” he repeats._

_Déjà vu. “I’m glad,” she says. “Why are you in a hospital?”_

_“She had a panic attack during lunch,” he says, and then it’s like all his resolve just crumbles: his subvocals jitter in distress and his entire posture slumps. “She couldn’t breathe. I,” he rubs his hand over the back of his neck. “I didn’t know what else to do.”_

_“You did the right thing,” she assures him, and starts shoving things into her bag._

_He takes a sharp breath and looks away._

_When he looks back, Olivia’s stunned by how_ young _he looks – like when they first brought the boys home and Quentus couldn’t relax. He’d spent so long vigilantly protecting his brother, so long standing watch, he didn’t know how else to exist. Didn’t know how to stand down. It was almost a year before his eyes stopped darting around, searching for movement in the shadows. She swallows, pauses in her packing, and waits for him._

_“They gave her oxygen and some meds, and got her calmed down. She’s fine,” he says again. He looks behind him, presumably at the bed Nora’s in. “She’s dozing. But,” he shakes his head, “I don’t know. Something’s wrong, Mom.”_

_Though luckily hers are few and far between these days, she’s all too familiar with panic attacks: they certainly don’t happen in a vacuum. Nora’s been a little withdrawn lately, but she assumed it was just Nora being sixteen and wanting her privacy. With a quiet sigh, Olivia nods and continues packing up. Whatever she forgets, and she’s sure it will be a lot, Blake can bring over later. “What hospital did you take her to?” She ducks underneath her desk to unplug her charging cable._

_“Presidium General.”_

_“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, okay?” She looks at him, holds his gaze for a moment. His mandibles flicker, and a little, tiny part of him relaxes. It isn’t much, but Olivia will take it – anything not to see him look like that again._

_He nods. “Yeah.”_

_“You’re a very good brother,” she says. “I’ll see you soon.”_

***

The _Courtland_ ’s airlock hisses and breaks its seal. Slowly, the door retracts into the hull, revealing the Haliat-Gemini civilian docks. Unlike military docks, civilian docks have hardly any restrictions, so they’re packed with merchants and traders, swindlers and thieves, beggars and performers. Nora smiles as she walks down the gangway to the pier; she lifts her backpack onto both shoulders and leads the others on a circuitous route that should – barring an impromptu parade – lead them through the docks and to the other side where their turian contact is waiting to speed them through Customs & Immigration.

Smoky floral incense fills her nose as they pass a small candlelit altar to Tevura. Nora briefly closes her eyes and sends up a quick prayer as she ghosts her fingers over the shrine. Whether Tevura smiles on humans as well as asari, she doesn’t know, but asking can’t hurt; she’ll take any extra protection she can get for this mission.

A small salarian child runs in front of her, and Nora steps out of their way; the child giggles while chasing a ball down the guttered edges of the pier. An older salarian calls out something after the child and while Nora’s knowledge of minor salarian dialects begins and ends with asking for alcohol and a taxi, parental disapproval is universal. She bites back a smile and helps the child retrieve the ball before the family patriarch’s scolding grows louder.

She looks behind her to make sure she hasn’t lost anyone. Though the glowing _Customs & Immigration_ sign is plainly obvious off to their right, it’s far from a straight line from where the _Courtland_ docked to the checkpoint. She’s the only one who’s been to this part of Haliat-Gemini before and, though the civilian docks rearrange themselves about twice a year, she’s been here enough to know the general route. She stands on her toes and mentally counts heads, feeling a little like a grade school teacher on a field trip, and pauses for a moment to let Micah and Rachel catch up.

“This is crazy,” Alle says, raising her voice to be heard through the cacophony of conversation, and steps to the side of the crowded walkway to stand beside Nora.

Nora looks around at the piled shipping containers that make up the maze of the docks. “This is pretty tame,” she observes. The last time she was here, a local loan shark and mob boss had just finally been caught by station security, and the dock residents celebrated by burning him in effigy. There were a lot of fire alarms; she was thankful her stay was only a few hours. 

When Micah and Rachel rejoin the rest of the group, Nora starts walking again. They turn off the pier and onto the main structure and, improbably, into more chaos. The crowded walkway becomes even more packed as travelers from all the various piers make their way to one location; panhandlers and merchants call out from the empty shipping containers they’ve made into their homes, children run through the crowd as if the walkway was clear (and Nora checks her pockets – suddenly empty, though she’d intentionally put a small handful of credits in there), and tourists stand still in the middle of the crowd to check their holomaps. 

Nora turns them down a side alley that’s thankfully a little less crowded, but one that’s full of juggling acts, contortionists, and one very daring fire eater. 

Movement above catches her eye and she looks up at the stacked containers. On top of the second level, a young asari maiden twists and contorts her body while balancing on her hands. The fire eater blows a fireball to the great delight of the crowd, but its flames lick all the way up to the asari’s balancing blocks. Angrily, she lays on her stomach, hangs halfway over the edge and yells down at him in a language Nora can’t decipher; her translator program picks up only every fourth word. 

They pass through the circus and the alley abruptly ends in a large, open courtyard that smells incredible. Nora grins: they found the food stalls. The security checkpoint they need is just on the other side of the courtyard, but the ‘meal’ the _Courtland_ considered lunch was barely more than a packet of pretzels. She gestures for the others to get something, and then buys herself a very large frozen coffee: shot of caramel, whipped cream, extra chocolate sprinkles. She overtips, and takes a sip as she turns around, surveying the crowd and docks as she waits for the rest of her team.

It was hard to see until they climbed out of the piers, but the docks have grown since she was last here. The tall apartments at the back, away from the ships and behind the checkpoint, were covered in scaffolding and hadn’t even been wired yet. The food stalls have quadrupled in number, and most of the labyrinthine walls have grown to at least three containers high, even four in some places. 

Two years ago, the final relay came back online; they’d all thought having a complete relay system again would be a good thing, and it mostly has been, but as each relay was brought back online, even more people found out just how destroyed their homes really were. Upwards of thirty years of abandonment only worsened what damage the reapers caused. Nora wonders how many of the docks’ residents just put down roots here when they got word of how bad home was, and never turned in the final part of their travel vouchers.

The rest of her team slowly joins her, each with their own snack. Carlos appears with a McDonald’s bag, and Nora just shakes her head. There’s at least one on every station. She takes a large sip of her coffee and walks toward the escalator that will take them, finally, to the security checkpoint.

The crowd doesn’t dissipate as they step onto the escalator. As she watches several travelers wrestle with large bags along with equally-large backpacks, Nora’s glad they’re all traveling light – wearing civvies, with critical gear and nothing else in their bags; the rest of their gear is in armored lockers and will be shuttled directly to the turian ship.

As the escalator rises out of the docks and toward the security station, Nora scans the area for any sign of their contact. She wasn’t given a name or a photo, just a promise that someone would meet them. They’re piggybacking on a classified Hierarchy mission, and she doubts they’d trust a station security guard, even a high-ranking one, to meet them.

And then her gaze settles on markings she’s seen all her life, and a familiar crest. Her eyes light up in surprise and joy, and she breaks into a wide, open-mouthed grin. She checks the security of her coffee’s lid, then shoves the cup in her backpack’s side pocket. As soon as the two batarians ahead of her step off the escalator, she jumps the top step and runs across the open area – dodging travelers and annoyed guards alike – to tackle her brother in a hug.

“Woah!” Quentus laughs as Nora nearly knocks him off his feet. He wraps his arms around her shoulders as best he can with his armor and her backpack in the way, and hugs her tight. “I’m happy to see you too,” he whispers.

Nora presses her forehead against his. “You look good for a three-day hangover.”

He groans. “Mom told you?” At her nod, he shrugs and sighs. “Only so much brandy you can drink before your brother kicks you out of his apartment and tells you to move on with your life,” he says, flicking his mandibles out just a little.

Nora doesn’t buy the act for a second, but the rest of her team has joined them. “We’ll talk later,” she says softly, squeezing his arm before she steps back.

“Alright,” Quentus says. He turns to the others, and gives Alle a little nod of greeting before he slips back into rank. “I’m Captain Quentus Vakarian,” he straightens his spine and settles his weight, resting his hands behind his back. “I’ll be your contact while you’re on board the station and in route to your destination. I’ll get all of you through C&I without waiting through that mess,” he gestures to the chaos of lines and confused crowds. “Then I’m going to borrow Vakarian for a bit, and the rest of you can enjoy 24 hours on Haliat-Gemini, courtesy of the Hierarchy. Your Alliance IDs will let you anywhere on the station, but I’d _highly_ recommend staying within the habitat ring.”

“We were supposed to leave in six hours,” Jonah says.

Nora pauses while pulling her drink back out. “This was supposed to be a supply layover, nothing more.” She wipes the condensation off the cup and takes a long slow sip, careful to avoid brain freeze. 

“As much as I adore my sister,” he wraps an arm around Nora’s shoulders and squeezes. She rolls her eyes and ducks out from under his arm. “Our mission isn’t to transport you. We have our own mission, and we’re waiting for a few more people. You’ll still leave with enough time, I promise.” He gestures them forward and leads them to an empty line marked, in several languages, as _high priority._

Nora shares a confused look with Jonah, and then looks back at her brother. She opens her mouth to ask for a little more detail, but Quentus gives her a sharp, single shake of his head. Nora well knows that shake – _not now_ – so she nods, and files into line first. 

A salarian steps up to the scanners. Quentus peers over the salarian’s monitors and clicks his tongue. He shakes his head. “Gold level.”

The salarian nods, clears the green disc he was about to use, and instead puts a gold disc into the machine. He doesn’t even blink at the arsenal that shows up on the scanners as their bags go through the conveyor belt. The machine highlights all of their guns, but doesn’t make a single noise. 

Once all six bags are clear, he asks for their travel credentials and they all line up single file. The salarian barely glances at her or the ID card Nora hands him before he scrolls to a blank page, stamps it, and hands the card back to her. “Welcome to Haliat-Gemini. Enjoy your stay,” he says monotonously, without even looking up, and gestures for Alle to step up keep the line moving.

Nora shoulders her bag again and steps aside. “That was easy,” she says as the others are scanned through. Their Alliance credentials mean that a lot of questions aren’t asked at security checkpoints, but civilian dock security usually doesn’t take too kindly to military personnel bringing their level of weaponry through. She swirls her coffee around, mixing the melted parts back in with the still-frozen parts.

“Solana got you guys gold clearance,” Quentus explains, before turning to address the others. “You’re all booked for the night in the Fedorian Towers. Level 8, blue sector,” he says as he hands each of them a keycard. “Show that to the concierge, they’ll check you in and assign you a room number.”

Nora bites back a smile. Fedorian Towers is the fanciest hotel on the station, and she wonders how many favors Solana had to cash in to get them all rooms there for the night. The smile fades: there are perfectly good Alliance apartments they should be staying in, and she wonders just _why_ Solana cashed in those favors. She hasn’t seen her aunt in a couple of years, but that’s not reason to put six people up in the swankiest hotel in the sector.

“Go check in,” Nora says, “I’ll keep you updated.”

Rachel looks up from the Haliat-Gemini metro map she’s pulled up on her omnitool. “Got it. Let’s go,” she gestures for Jonah, Alle, Carlos, and Micah to follow her to the metro station just across the security area.

Once they’re out of earshot, Nora turns to her brother. Almost before she can open her mouth to ask what’s going on, he holds up a hand to stop her. 

“In the car,” he says, leading them to a rapid transit kiosk hidden around the corner. Instead of a standard yellow station taxi, a black skycar, Hierarchy symbol painted in silvery blue on its doors, idles as it waits for them.

Nora raises an eyebrow as she slides in. She’s been in cars like this before, as a kid whenever she accompanied her father on a trip. They’re for high-ranking diplomats and military personnel only. Last time she checked, she doesn’t warrant this level of transportation from the turian military at all, and Quentus isn’t ranked nearly high enough to be granted this on his own.

“Alright,” she says, after he taps on the panel behind the driver. She tucks her feet up underneath her onto the synthleather bench as the car pulls out of the station. There’s a brief moment of stomach-flipping acceleration before the inertial dampeners kick in. “What’s going on?”

“The four people we’re waiting for are stuck at the Aralakh checkpoint. Sol’s been fighting with krogan security all day.” He pushes a button and two panels on the bench between them retract, revealing a refrigerator and a cabinet full of snacks. “Help yourself, it’s a long ride to the military docks.”

Nora checks the chirality symbol on a pack of peanut butter crackers and then tears into it. “So Sol’s been on the phone with Wrex all day. Why the fancy escort and fancier hotel?”

“It’s very classified,” Quentus says, “but the timing is critical. And,” he tightens his mandibles, grimacing, “she’s having an awful time even getting through to Wrex. She’s getting stalled by ‘protocol.’” He makes air quotes around the word. “The Hierarchy gave her pretty much an unlimited budget to make this mission happen, so she’s pampering the person who can fix the problem.”

Nora blinks as she processes just what it is that her brother isn’t explicitly asking her to do. “You…you need me to call Wrex?” She bites back a laugh.

“If you don’t mind.”

The laugh escapes despite her best efforts, and Nora nearly doubles over. It’s a turian military operation, so Solana and Quentus technically can’t use family connections to leverage privilege. But as an Alliance N3 soldier unrelated to their mission, Nora has a lot more leeway in what channels she uses to get what she needs. “Unreal,” she says, sitting up straight again. 

“Thank you,” he says.

The driver pulls into a reserved lane, and Nora smiles softly as she looks out the skycar’s tinted window. Cipritine glows brightly below them in the night. She’s only been to Palaven a handful of times, and last when she was seventeen; but even though she always left with an impressive sunburn despite her best efforts, it’s always felt like a third home to her, after the Citadel and Earth. 

They spend the rest of the ride talking about what Quentus can tell her about his new assignment – cutting-edge stealth technology, Solana’s handpicked crew out of an applicant pool of thousands, but he dodges any details. Nora’s almost finished with her coffee when the car pulls up to a stop right outside a ship. She finishes the drink in three big gulps, regrets it immediately as brain freeze rushes through her skull, drops the cup in the car’s matter recycler along with the cracker wrapper, and steps out of the dim car into the brightly-lit docks. She blinks, adjusting to the light.

“I don’t understand how you and Mom drink that stuff and _don’t_ end up vibrating off the walls so hard you crash,” Quentus says.

She looks up at him and smiles. “The trick is to keep a steady stream of it.” She’ll stay awake while they’re on the station, and then crash once they get on the ship. Most of her team will do something similar – the only way to get properly rested for a mission with this much travel is to completely ignore actual clocks and set their own time zone.

He leads her to the open airlock, where he nods at a turian lieutenant standing guard. The lieutenant lets them through into the dim light of the ship’s CIC. She follows Quentus around the individual stations and galaxy map to the back of the ship. He taps the control panel outside a closed door. After a moment, the control panel lights up and the door opens.

Sitting at her desk, Solana looks up from her monitor. “Oh, thank you,” she says. “Not you,” she snaps at whoever’s on the other end of the vidcall, “you have been less than helpful. Inform your commanding officer that I will be in touch again, and soon.” She ends the call without waiting for a response, and then stands. “Hi, Nora.”

“Hi,” Nora sets her bag down on the chair opposite the desk and then steps forward to hug her aunt. “Quentus tells me you’re having a bit of a problem with the krogan?” 

A growl starts low in Solana’s throat. “An understatement. My team needs to be through the checkpoint within two hours to arrive here on time. You’re not the only ones with a timing issue.”

Nora nods and pulls up her vidcall app. If the call comes from a turian signal, she won’t even get through to Wrex. “Can I ask why they’re being held up?”

The growl turns into an irritated rumble. “It’s not them. There’s an issue with the agriculture permits of a hanar ship ahead of them. They’re not allowed to transfer to another lane, and Aralakh customs agents have never been great at logistics. The whole thing’s at a standstill, it’s a mess.”

Nora pauses with her finger above Wrex’s contact card and tilts her head. “ _One_ ship doesn’t have its paperwork in order, and so a major checkpoint on the galaxy’s biggest shipping and transit corridor has come to a screeching halt?” 

“Yes.”

“Miracle we get anything done,” Nora mutters. She has his direct line, so when the call finally connects, it’s Wrex’s face she sees on the screen.

 _“Oh, not you too,_ ” he says.

“It’s nice to see you too, Wrex,” she smiles. 

_“Tell that aunt and brother of yours that we’re trying to sort it out, and I can’t make special arrangements for their people just because I fought next to a Vakarian thirty years ago and didn’t eat him.”_

It’s far more than simply _didn’t eat him_ , and everyone in the room knows it, but the stress in Wrex’s voice is pretty clear. A backed-up checkpoint isn’t anything he should be involved with. If he’s been pulled into it, it’s even worse than Solana made it sound. 

Nora thinks for a moment. “Okay, how about this. You send a team out to clear the turian transport through within the hour. And in exchange,” she says rapidly, before he can jump in and argue, “I get Aralakh traffic relief pushed to the top of my mom’s list, and guarantee you a meeting with her by the end of the week.” 

He blinks at her. _“Throw in a team of C-Sec customs agents to help us clear this mess out and you’ve got a deal.”_

Nora looks over the top of the screen at Solana. She can’t make the call for C-Sec, but Solana has enough pull to make it happen. Solana nods.

“Deal. I’ll even have them bring donuts.”

Wrex chuckles. _“Galaxy better watch out if you ever go into politics, kid.”_

Nora grins. “Thanks.” She absorbed a lot when she was younger, pretending to do homework in the back of a shuttle. 

_“They’ll be clear in an hour. Good luck on whatever it is you’re up to._ ”

“Thanks, Wrex,” she ends the call.

Solana sighs in relief. “Thank you.”

Nora sends a quick message to her mother – _long story, I promised Wrex he’d be on your calendar by the end of the week to talk about Aralakh_ – and smiles at her aunt. “No problem. Any other strings you need me to pull?”

“No,” Solana says, “that was it. I appreciate it. Our departure time is 1830 tomorrow. I need you and your team on board by 1630 at the latest.”

“You got it. Can I steal him for dinner?” she points at Quentus.

“Yes.” Solana shifts her gaze to Quentus. “I need you back at 0600 to start a final equipment check. Go have fun.”

Quentus snaps to attention, and then Nora follows him back out of Solana’s office and off the ship.

***

_There’s a knock at his door. Quentus looks up, away from the screen and Nico. “Yeah?”_

_The door slides open and Nora pokes her head in._

_He frowns and looks at the clock. She went to bed with one of Mom’s sleeping pills three hours ago. “Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?”_

_She shrugs. “It didn’t take,” she says around a yawn. “Can I hang out with you for a bit?”_

_He waves her in. He wouldn’t want to be alone after the day she’s had, either. It’s why he called Nico._

_“Hi,” she says, waving at their brother on the screen. She flops down next to Quentus on the floor at the foot of his bed._

_“Hey,” Nico says. “Are you doing okay?”_

_Nora smiles. The smile’s a little fuzzy: the drugs are working, just not as well as she needs._

_“Prognosis is I’ll live,” she says, trying to keep her voice light and easy. But they both know her better than that._

_Nico smiles at her. “I’m sorry I’m not there.”_

_Nora looks at Nico, and then over at Quentus. “I had a panic attack, guys. I’m not dying.”_

_Nico clears his throat. “I’m sorry I’m not there,” he repeats._

_With a soft breath, Nora nods. “This guy’s got it covered, don’t worry,” she assures him, nudging Quentus enough that he sways a bit. “He got all protective and serious and called an ambulance and_ everything _.” Her eyes widen melodramatically._

_Quentus knows she’s teasing him, but this afternoon was terrifying. “You couldn’t breathe.”_

_Something shifts in Nora’s eyes just below the surface and her shoulders curl inward. “Let’s not relive the very big very public panic attack at my favorite smoothie place I can no longer go to out of sheer embarrassment.” Her voice is tight, too._

_Quentus bumps her shoulder with his. She takes a visibly-shaky breath, and he opens his subvocals, settling into soft, soothing vibration. Nico does the same, though it loses a little through the link._

_“Thanks,” she murmurs after a moment, staring at her feet._

_“Is there anything I can do?” Nico asks._

_Nora thinks on that. Quentus gives her credit for not immediately telling him no._

_“Those stupid bird videos are great,” she decides. “Especially the fat round ones.”_

_Nico’s mandibles flutter. “I have plenty,” he promises. There’s indistinct shouting behind him, shouting Quentus doesn’t miss in the least. Nico grimaces. “It’s almost lights out, I have to go.”_

_“Have a good night,” Nora waves. She manages a smile for him, and maybe through the vidcom it even looks genuine._

_“Have fun on your camping trip!” Quentus says with a big grin. He doesn’t miss that, either._

_Nico flips him a rude gesture, smiles again at Nora, and then blinks out._

_They sit in silence for a few long moments, before Nora sighs heavily beside him. “Did Mom tell you?”_

_He nods. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Nora.” He’s not sure he caught all the details, and he’s not sure they’re even necessary, but he understood the important part: all of Nora’s friends abandoned her at the beginning of the semester. Three months ago. He’d wondered why she’d been calling him more often._

_Add that to a rigorous class schedule, those turncoat friends working a cruel streak, and Mom and Dad being busier than usual, it’s no wonder she broke down when he asked what he’d thought was an innocent question about school._

_Nora sniffles. “Yeah,” she says, more to herself than to him._

_If he looks at her at just the right angle, she would look like any other normal, sleep-deprived human teenager. To anyone else, she’d just look tired. Then again, to anyone else, she would’ve looked like a normal kid when she first came home, too. But he knew what he was seeing then, and it kills him that he’s seeing it again now – the fear that comes from feeling alone._

_He was ten, and she was four, and he knew how scary it is when you’re small and don’t have anyone to protect you._

_“Want to play MarioKart?” he offers, part to break the silence, part to give her something else to think about._

_Nora shakes her head. Quentus didn’t think it possible, but that shake of her head is more worrying than the panic attack. She’s always up for MarioKart: it’s the only game she can reliably kick his ass in._

_She must catch the concerned expression on his face, because she presses her lips into a thin line and looks mildly irritated. “The meds are a little,” she jitters her hand in the air, “weird. I think all the chaos might send me over the edge.”_

_“You’ll be fine; I know where the hospital is.”_

_She stares at him, and then scrunches up her face and kicks at his knee. “You’re an asshole.”_

_He grins. “Twentieth-century Earth science fiction it is,” he says, pulling up the shared family media library._

_“I heard you and Mom talking,” she says quietly as he’s queuing up a couple of lighter episodes. “And, uh. I think I’d really like it if you were home for a bit.”_

_Quentus leans back beside her and starts the episode. He’s had the email drafted for hours, since they got back from the hospital. He was only waiting to talk to her before he sent the extended leave request to his CO. “You got it,” he says, resting an arm around her shoulders._

***

“You’re an idiot,” Quentus says, as soon as the door clicks shut behind them. He’s been trying not to say so ever since he picked her up at the checkpoint four hours ago. But the more he watches her, the clearer her discomfort is. He may have left for service when she was ten, but he knows his sister. She was way too quiet on the skycar to see Solana, and practically silent on the metro ride to the hotel.

Slowly, Nora turns around. “Hey, Nora. Thanks for buying dinner,” she mocks, shrugging her backpack off and to the floor. 

“Thank you,” he says belatedly. “Cerberus, Nora? An actual Cerberus outpost?”

“Okay, one,” she aggressively holds up a finger, “that’s classified. I don’t even know that Sol was supposed to know that. And two,” she holds up another finger and takes a calming breath, “you’re not telling me anything I haven’t already told myself,” she says quietly. She walks over to the window and pulls the curtains back. The hotel gave her a spaceside view, and Palaven’s night glows beneath them. 

He sets their takeout bags on the coffee table and stands next to her. The reflectionless glass gives an eerie sensation of nothing standing between them and space. “Nothing’s classified when you tell Dad,” he says. When he’s worried about one of his children, their father’s concept of _classified_ becomes very fuzzy. 

Nora sighs and exhales slowly. “I know.” She blinks and looks up at him. “You really think I’m nuts for taking this?”

“Yes.” He’s watched her grow up. He’s watched her change from a scared little kid into a sweet, smart, and anxiety-ridden teenager, and finally into the woman next to him – confident, happy, and who has her shit way more together than he does. But through all of that, Nora’s never really managed to let go of her worry about the control chip.

Quentus supposes he wouldn’t be able to, either.

“Did Dad also tell you the part about how I’m stuck with this mission, unless I want to leave my team one man down?”

“He left that part out.” Quentus doubts it was intentional; they’d been playing phone tag for three days before he finally caught him in a two-minute break before meetings.

Nora sighs again. “Yeah,” she says, turning away from the window. She flops into a pillowy chair and then drags the coffee table closer to her. “I’m trying the whole _think positive, it’ll be fine_ thing.” She opens up her takeout bag, grease stains already forming on the plain brown paper, and pulls out her thick, foil-wrapped burger.

“How’s that working so far?” He pushes a chair close to the table and sits down, opening up his own dinner.

“I’m focusing on the _kill a bunch of Cerberus goons_ part, not so much the _could walk past the wrong panel and activate the control chip, who knows_ part.” She makes an exaggerated shrug before carefully pulling back the foil on her burger. “And I’m considering running the whole thing on stims just so I’m too wired to be scared.”

“That’s a _terrible_ plan,” Quentus says, as if he hasn’t done exactly the same thing before; he doubts there’s a soldier alive who hasn’t. He opens his carton of _oorlak_ and the warm, spicy smoky scent fills his nose. This assignment is a good one and he’s looking forward to it – and it should bump him up a few ranks for when the Council opens up Spectre applications again – but he’s going to miss food that didn’t come out of vacuum-sealed packages. Dehydrated meat should be a crime.

She swallows and sets her burger down. “Didn’t say it was a good one,” she says, picking up her soda. “And he who drinks an entire bottle of booze does not get to throw stones about _my_ unwise coping methods.” She points at him with her drink. 

“Nico exaggerates. It was only _half_ the bottle.”

Her face softens. “I’m sorry you didn’t get in,” she says quietly. “I know how much you wanted it.”

“Thanks,” he says, staring into his food. It’s been almost two weeks and, though he’s thrown himself headfirst into this new assignment, the sting hasn’t gone away. He suspects it won’t for a while. 

“You know Dad would’ve recused himself from the vote, Q.” 

He looks up to see his sister staring at him in concern, switching roles from just five minutes ago. “I know. He did.” Though Spectre identities are secret from the public these days, Council voting records are open to any candidate. _Vakarian, Garrus (Turian Councilor)_ is listed in the _Abstained_ column by his name. “But that doesn’t help much.” It was a close vote, though not so close his father could’ve had any influence on the outcome.

Nora crumples up a napkin and bounces it off his forehead. “Cheer up. You’re leading the primary ground team on a super secret spy mission you were handpicked for. And,” she grins and makes a truly ridiculous wide-eyed face, “you get to spend the next four days with your favorite sister!”

Quentus exaggerates a groan and mimes stabbing himself in the neck. Laughing, she throws another napkin at him, but misses. He picks up both and tosses them back at her. “I have four episodes of Big Brother I’ve been saving to watch with you.” His unit has a lucrative betting pool going, so he’s thoroughly spoiled for evictions, but he hasn’t actually seen the episodes. Ever since he first left for basic, he and Nora always watch the show together, no matter how long it takes them.

“You’re the best,” she says with a smile.

“You won’t be saying that when you see who doesn’t get evicted,” he says, pulling up the video app on his omnitool and casting it to the screen on the wall.

She looks at him in horror. “Is that asshole volus _still there_?”

Quentus simply shrugs and starts the first episode. As the opening credits run, his omnitool chirps with a message from Solana: _Rest of team acquired. Mission is go. Remind Nora 1630 or we’re leaving without them._

He considers lying and telling Nora the departure time changed. Leaving Nora and her team here might not be the worst thing to happen. But they both have their orders. He sends back an acknowledgment and settles into his chair to watch the show. 


	5. are we the hunters, or are we the prey?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the team lands on Zorya, and of course everything goes 100% completely according to plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Sorry for the delay; real life nonsense occurred, and occurred loudly, but it's all resolved now. This fic should be back to a more frequent update schedule now that said nonsense is no longer occurring in my general direction.

The _Oralla_ wasn’t designed as a transport ship, and its guest quarters are nonexistent – the turians shoved three sets of human bunkbeds into what could charitably be called a closet. They’re all long accustomed to making do with whatever’s available and, though Nora has to climb in and out of her bed very carefully so as to not knock her head on the metal legs of the other two sets, it’s far from the worst place she’s had to sleep since joining the Alliance.

They’re due to depart in their shuttle for Zorya in eight hours, and they’re meant to be getting some sleep. But she’s too wired – always is the night before a mission, Cerberus or no – so she rolls onto her stomach, turns her omnitool’s light almost all the way down, and pulls up the Cerberus databurst Jonah intercepted this morning. The message glows bright in the dark room, but her teammates are long asleep. She could probably host a concert in the middle of the room and none of them would wake up.

Jonah passed the burst on to Alliance Intelligence, but they won’t get it for a couple of days and won’t be able to completely break it for probably a month. A very-illegal program of Alle’s managed to break through the first layer of encryption, at least giving them access to a weather report and some low-security emails. 

The meteor shower started two days ago, and they’ll land in the height of it, just as they planned. And if it isn’t raining, it’ll be so humid it might as well be, just as they thought.

The six of them scoured the emails over dinner and didn’t find anything particularly interesting. Nora scrolls past the weather report, figuring a second look at even low-security correspondence can’t hurt.

She makes it through all of them in half an hour, and finally starts to feel sleep tugging her away. She closes her omnitool without learning anything new, but she wishes they’d been able to break through even another level. Maybe then they’d have an actual project name. 

***

Quentus pulls her into a tight hug while the rest of her squad runs final equipment checks. “I still think you’re an idiot,” he murmurs quietly. 

Nodding, Nora returns the hug. “Yeah, me too.”

“Last chance to bail,” he says. 

She knows he means it as a joke, but Nora also knows him well enough to hear the truth in his subharmonics: if he had any authority to do so, he’d order her off the mission. She appreciates the sentiment. “No such luck,” she says, bumping her forehead against his. 

“Not to interrupt the sibling moment,” Jonah says, “but we need to get going.”

Nora nods and steps away from her brother. “Rendezvous point, seven days,” she confirms. It’ll be a boring few days waiting for pickup, but the shuttle’s FTL drive isn’t strong enough to get them back to the Aquila system and the relay in anything less than two years. 

“See you then. Good hunting,” Quentus claps her on the shoulder. 

Smiling, Nora returns the gesture. “Good hunting.”

***

_Olivia stops on her way to bed, seeing her daughter’s light still on. She knocks lightly and, upon hearing a quiet “yeah,” pokes her head in. “Everything okay?”_

_Nora looks up from her tablet and blinks. She’s three weeks into her new school, has made a few friends, and seems to be settling in well. But Olivia knows what she’s looking for now, and Nora’s hesitation at the door every morning – the pause, deep breath, and squared shoulders – is like a flashing neon sign._

_“In the war,” Nora starts quietly, “how did you do it?”_

_Olivia raises an eyebrow and steps inside, letting the door close behind her. “What do you mean?”_

_She shrugs and tosses her tablet beside her on the bed. “You fought banshees and brutes and everything. How’d you not freak out every time you saw one?”_

_Pursing her lips, Olivia takes a moment to pull her answer together. Her mother asked the same question during the war, and her answer was an unsatisfactory “panic for five seconds while running very fast for cover, then get your ass in gear.” She has a suspicion that, as unhelpful as that was for her mother, it’s even less helpful for her daughter. She moves Nora’s backpack off her desk chair and sits down, tucking her feet up underneath her. “It helped a lot that I’d probably get myself and my squad killed if I let myself freak out,” she says honestly. She’s always been grateful for the quality of her fight-or-flight response._

_Nora huffs. “That’s not going to work for school.”_

_“I certainly hope not,” Olivia smiles, then goes serious again. “You still having trouble?” she asks, though she knows the answer._

_“A little,” Nora admits. “I’m usually okay once I’m there, but sometimes I still get a little…panicky. It’s so dumb,” she sighs, “there’s no reason for it, and I just. I’m annoyed,” she concludes._

_Nodding, Olivia understands completely. Years passed before she didn’t find herself tensing up whenever she heard an electronic scream, or saw a red laser beam, or looked out a viewport the wrong way. She spent most of those years annoyed at her reaction and was never sure whether she was more upset at the reaction itself, or that she was still reacting at all. “It takes time,” she says._

_Nora frowns at that. “Got any tips for making it through in the meantime? That don’t involve imminent bodily harm?”_

_“One thing at a time,” Olivia says gently; her father’s advice from forty years ago is just as sound now as it was then. “Focus on one thing, and one thing only. And when that’s done, move on to the next.”_

_“That seems too simple.”_

_She shrugs. “It works. And,” she smiles softly, “when all else fails, breathe. Good air in, bad air out.”_

*******

Nora wrinkles up her nose as soon as they step off the shuttle. Zorya is not only hot and humid and in the middle of its rainy season, it’s not only in the middle of nowhere, and not only does it have several kinds of venomous snakes and poisonous plant life – it also smells like the tropical bird exhibit at the Citadel Zoo. Her boots squelch in the mud.

“Lovely,” Carlos says, his voice tinny over comms.

Rachel’s omnitool casts an eerie glow around them. “I’m not seeing anything on their comms,” she says. “Looks like the meteor plan worked.” She closes her tool, leaving them in the silvery starlit darkness.

“Good,” Jonah says. “Move out.”

Silently, they settle their weapons in their grip and fall into formation: Alle taking point, Carlos and Rachel spread out behind her, Jonah and Micah staggered behind them, and Nora bringing up the rear.

The base is three miles away through dense jungle, and though they’re all in full helmets and on comms, they make the hike in silence except to point out hazards. Exposed roots threaten to trip them, branches catch at their arms and chests, and more than once they barely skirt the edge of a mud pit or sinkhole. 

Nora brings up her combat playlist – a combination of bass-driven club tracks and fight music from various video games – and sets it to play quietly in her private channel. If she has to listen to just the silence of the jungle, which isn’t that silent at all, she’s going to go crazy before they even get to the perimeter. 

One step at a time, she focuses on moving forward – left, right, left, right, step over the root, avoid the rock, left, right – and keeping her eyes on the jungle around her. Though they landed in a small clearing, the rest of the jungle isn’t so forgiving. Trees and plants are so thick even the moonlight has trouble breaking through. Flashlights are too risky in the dark, so they’re relying on nightvision.

Her eyes flick from one movement to the next, hypervigilant. A pyjak, fearlessly hopping from one branch to the next. A snake, slithering on its branch, poised to attack the pyjak. Three birds, circling through the maze of branches above the snake. A wolf-like creature, standing perfectly still behind a bush, looking up at the birds, its eyes glowing green and eerie in the nightvision camera. The wolf looks away from the birds and levels its calm, fierce stare directly at Nora. She shivers.

Abruptly, Alle holds up a fist. Nora’s HUD, designed to recognize hand signals from teammate gloves, flashes a red light in the lower left corner. She stops moving and takes cover behind a thick tree.

“Two o’clock,” Alle says. “Vakarian, check it out.”

She scopes in where Alle indicated. Nothing but trees. “I don’t see anything,” she says. But then movement catches her eye. “Wait,” she flips on her scope’s infrared sensors. “That’s…large,” she says, flatly. “It looks kind of like a bear.”

“Grizzly bear or black bear?” Carlos asks.

“It’s a _bear_ ,” Micah says, “what does it…?”

“They act differently,” Carlos says. “A grizzly would –”

“Neither,” Nora says, cutting off the incoming discussion on Earth-based bear behavior. “It’s got a long tail, for one thing.”

“Then it’s not a bear,” Carlos says.

“You have binoculars, you look at it.”

There’s a quiet shuffle as Carlos pulls out his binoculars. “That’s…Nora, what the hell, that doesn’t even look remotely like a bear.”

She glares in Carlos’ general direction. “Oh, you know what.”

Jonah coughs pointedly. “Let’s table the classification discussion and focus on whether it’s going to eat us.”

A few moments pass in silence, and then the shuffling noise repeats as Carlos puts his binoculars back. “There wasn’t anything about this in the planetary file, so it’s probably not an issue.”

“Because that’s not logic that hasn’t bitten us in the ass before,” Alle scoffs.

“I’m just saying, if the vorcha knew about the mutated pyjaks, the venomous snakes, and the extremophile bacteria that causes both, they would probably know if an eight-foot-tall predator was making its home in the jungle. They’re dumb, but they’re not that dumb.”

Nora practically hears Jonah rolling his eyes.

“Well, let’s hope that _they’re dumb, but they’re not that dumb_ is an accurate analysis, but let’s go a little out of our way to avoid the bear anyway,” Jonah says. “Move out.”

“It’s not a bear,” Carlos starts. “Ow!” he says.

Nora flicks her safety on and zooms in on Carlos. Her grin widens. He’s rubbing the back of his head, while Rachel stands with her arms crossed, staring at him. 

“I will turn this mission around,” Jonah grumbles, and Nora turns her comms off with barely enough time before she starts laughing.

“Move _out_ ,” Jonah repeats. “And radio silence until we get to Checkpoint One.”

They all fall into formation again, following Alle’s circuitous lead to give the not-bear a wide berth. 

The rest of the hike is uneventful, but without the banter of her squad to distract her, Nora finds panic tugging at her edges. Up until now, even when they were on Haliat-Gemini, even when they were traveling on the _Oralla_ , even when she said goodbye to her brother a few hours ago, even when they were landing the shuttle, this mission was just a concept, something vague and intangible. She could approach it academically, outside of herself, and not have to actually acknowledge the very real fact that she’s walking into a Cerberus base. A Cerberus base with Cerberus security, Cerberus technology, Cerberus forces, Cerberus _everything_.  

She thought she was worried before. She had no idea.

 _Good air in, bad air out_ , Nora repeats to herself. _Good air in, bad air out_. She switches her music to a soothing instrumental playlist, one she’s used since high school to center herself and calm down. _Good air in, bad air out_ , she repeats, concentrating only on putting one foot in front of the other and keeping watch on her team’s six. Slowly, the panic retreats, and the emptiness it leaves in its wake fills with clear, laser-sharp focus.

By the time they reach the edge of the forest, her shoulders are square and loose, and the steady battlefield calm she’s trained herself to find and love has settled in. 

***

_“How do you do that?” Quentus asks, dusting himself off as he stands up at the end of the wave._

_Nora shrugs, and grabs a new set of grenades out of the ammo box. She’d taken down the two possessed praetorians in the end, but Armax’s new AIs need a lot of work before they’re ready for public use. At least they’re getting paid for spending their leave still geared up and fighting. “It’s fake,” she reminds him._

_Even though he’s in a full helmet and his visor’s dark, she can tell he’s giving her a Look. An annoyed look, a brotherly look, a yes-thank-you-I-knew-that look. “You didn’t even flinch.”_

_Again she shrugs, and ducks into cover beside him as the drone announces the next wave. He was taken out by a scion sync kill and he’s holding himself stiffly – he must’ve hit the arena floor at just the wrong angle. She bets he’ll be playing it safe for the rest of the match, maybe try to stay out of the middle of chaos this time. “I don’t know,” she says, lobbing a series of arc grenades into the spawn point._

_Quentus pops out of cover and follows her grenades with a clip full of inferno ammo. “That’s not helpful.”_

_“You’re seven years older than me,” she says, triggering the auto-destruct on her supply pylon on the other side of the base. It explodes, and a notification pops up in the kill feed:_ Nora Vakarian – Collector Captain [Supply Pylon] _. She fishes out another pylon token and activates it beside them. It immediately refills their shields and spits out two grenade tokens. She offers one to her brother to replenish his stim packs and programs the other for an inferno grenade before clicking it onto her belt. “And have ten years more combat experience. You’re telling me you need your kid sister to tell you how not to freak out in a fight?”_

_Another Look, this one – she’s sure – with an accompanying eyeroll. She smirks at him, then scopes in and nails a captain dead in the eye. Collectors are easy for headshots, and she has a bet going with Micah._

_“I’m just curious,” he says, cloaking before he starts shooting this time. “You looked pretty calm for being the only one standing in front of two fully-loaded possessed praetorians, even if they were fake.”_

_“My fight-or-flight response is heavily weighted toward_ fight _,” she says, reloading._

_Quentus is about 50/50, and Nico tends to go for a third option – freeze. It’s part of why he left service as soon as he was able. “Uhm,” she says, catching sight of what’s spawning behind them, “yeah, we should move.”_

_Quentus looks over his shoulder. “Yep.” While they’re running down the ramp, putting a decent distance between them and the possessed abomination, he pushes the matter. “That wasn’t an answer.”_

_“It’s as good as I’ve got,” Nora says. She abruptly stops at the end of the ramp, turns while scoping in with her Valiant, and unloads a three-shot clip into the abomination. The nuclear explosion takes out a handful of troopers and captains, and triggers a chain reaction with two other abominations, but she and her brother are safe and out of range. “It just kind of happens, couldn’t tell you how.”_

***

They hang back a hundred feet in the trees so to not draw the attention of the guards. At least their intel is correct: three troopers guarding the shield access point, a single spotlight pointed toward the forest, the base glowing faintly in the distance beyond the shield. The shield shimmers a dim orange.

Jonah nods at her, and she holsters her Valiant before starting to climb a tree close to the edge. She needs to clear the treeline before she’ll have a decent shot at all three troopers, but she’s likely to draw their attention if she climbs one at the edge. The rough bark makes for easy traction, and the branches are solid, steady in her grip and underneath her feet. She easily makes it halfway up the tree, where she pauses to survey the branches in front of her. Confirming her path twice, she starts to move out along a branch, carefully traversing two trees until she has her back pressed against the trunk of one at the very edge. She expands her gun again and checks the security of its silencer.

Carefully, she lowers herself to lie on her stomach on the thickest branch and then slowly inches herself out. She isn’t quite hanging directly over the guards – far back enough that she’s covered in shadow, she’s far enough out that her shot isn’t obstructed. She looks through her scope and gets a solid bead on all three; she cycles through her shots, making sure she knows exactly how much to move her gun for each shot.

“Ready,” she whispers in her comms, her crosshairs hovering over the head of the first guard.

“Go,” Jonah confirms.

Nora takes a slow breath in and holds it for a moment. Halfway through her exhale, she fires. The guard’s head explodes, but she doesn’t see it – she’s already onto the second, and then the third. A quick reload, and she scopes back in, confirming all three kills. “Done,” she whispers, collapsing her gun and reconnecting it with her armor seals. Without quite as much care to mask her movements this time, she scoots backward toward the tree trunk.

“Roger,” Jonah says. “Carter, you’re up. Vakarian, get down here.”

Nora grips the branch with both hands and carefully slides off it, dangling down. She finds purchase with her boots on a branch below and releases the top one, reversing her way down the tree. At the final branch, she bends over, grasps the branch between her feet and lets herself fall to the ground. She swings a little bit from the branch and then lets go, smiling when her feet hit solid ground again.

Alle runs back into the trees, stolen access cards in hand. “Fire in the hole!”

The drill grenade explodes quietly but impressively, sending dirt, body parts, and electronics flying everywhere. The floodlight blows out, and a small wedge of the shield sparks and flickers. Then everything goes dark.

Alle grins at her teammates.

Jonah gestures for her to take point again. “Let’s go.”

***

“Radio silence,” Jonah orders as Alle swipes the security card at the access panel.

The little light turns from red to green, and the door slides open with a _hiss_. Cool, dry, climate-controlled air rolls out, a welcome relief from the hot, muggy jungle.

“Good hunting, Hydra,” Nora says to Jonah, Carlos, and Rachel as the three group up. It’s strange not to refer to Jonah’s team as Manticore, but this isn’t his regular team.

“Good hunting, Eidolon,” Jonah returns, and then leads Carlos and Rachel down the hall and around the corner.

It’s even stranger not to hear her own team called Chimera, and perhaps strangest of all not to have Carlos with her. When the other three are out of sight, Nora takes a deep breath, systematically shutting out everything that isn’t the mission. No control chip, no anxiety, no team name, nothing. Just the mission.

_One thing at a time. Good air in, bad air out._

Nora turns to Alle and Micah. If all goes well, they’ll meet up with Hydra on the opposite side of the base in a couple of hours, intel and maybe a few Cerberus people in hand, set explosive charges, and then hike back to their shuttle and fly back to the edge of the system and play cards for a few days while they wait for extraction. “Carter, you’re on point,” she orders, settling her gun in her hands.

Alle nods, turns off her armor’s lights, and activates her annihilation field with a wave of her right hand. The low growl sounds almost deafening in the silent hallway, but it soon blends into the base’s background – the electrical hum, a subtle rumble of machinery, and the erratic _thud_ as meteorites hit the shield outside. Without her lights on, Alle almost blends into the shadows, and she slinks around the first corner.

Micah follows, assault rifle primed and ready, visor glowing red with his hardsuit’s devastator mode. Nora brings up the rear, triggering her own visor to keep a reverse camera image in the bottom corner so she can see behind them.

The first fifteen minutes are silent. They didn’t expect to run into anyone this far at the edge of the base, but it makes all of them a little jumpy. The schematics Liara sent are nearly accurate – there’s a hallway where there was meant to be a wall, and a door they needed was fifty feet farther down than expected – and they easily make their way into the heart of the base. 

Alle holds up a fist, deactivates her annihilation field, and gestures for them to gather up. They all duck into a nook, mindful of the equipment stacked up beside them.

“Anyone else got a weird feeling about this?” she whispers.

Nora looks hard at her. “What do you mean?” She’s long learned to trust Alle’s instincts.

“I don’t know,” she says, “something just feels off.”

Micah taps the temple of his helmet, and his visor fades to clear. He squints around the corner, down the darkened hall. “She’s right. We’re about halfway in – we should’ve run into someone by now.”

Nora frowns. Now that her teammates have mentioned it, she notices the unsettled knot in the base of her spine. She’d been so focused on forcing herself to think that nothing was wrong that she hadn’t picked up on her actual unease creeping steadily forward. She thinks for a moment, and then clicks their group comm channel in a pattern: short short long, their signal for _I know we said radio silence, but I need to know if you’re still conscious_.

The response comes back almost immediately. One click _: potential shit ahead, hold for confirmation_.

All three of them hold their breath. 

Two clicks. 

_FUBAR, please assist._

“Well,” Nora says flatly. “We’re in it now.”

Nora has five seconds to mentally plot Hydra’s position on the other side of the base before she hears the high-pitched electronic whine of an illegal shock stick.

And then there’s a sharp pain in the base of her skull, and everything goes black.


	6. pound the alarm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We all knew this was coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr users nightingaleseeking and tarysande are delightful human beings who cheerlead and encourage me even when I'm being mean to my characters

_Nora blinks. Once. Twice. Three times._

_She knew the part about being found on a Cerberus station, and she knew the part about her biological mother (and everyone else) being dead, and she even knew the how of it._

_She did not know the part about the control chip. Until now._

_She blinks again and tries to make the words “control chip” make sense on their own. They certainly don’t make sense with “inside your brain.”_

_Mom’s telling her more, that it’s inactive, that they check regularly (and, at some point, Nora fully plans to ask how they’ve done this for the past eleven years without her noticing), that it’s nothing to worry about (which Nora doubts, heavily), it was just time she knew. But Nora’s still stuck on “control chip” and “inside your brain” and why there’s any reason in the universe those five words should go together._

_Mom doesn’t lie, so “control chip inside your brain” must be a true statement. But it slips and slides and scrambles, and every time Nora thinks she has it solid and still, it starts to swim again._

_“What do I do about it?” Nora asks, when she finally gives up trying to make this make sense. It doesn’t have to make sense for her to know what to do; that’s how she passed calculus last year._

_“Nothing.”_

_“This doesn’t really seem like something you do nothing about.”_

_Mom offers a small smile. “There’s nothing you_ can _do,” she rephrases. “It’s turned off, and it’s been off since we found you,” she promises. “It’s too small and too embedded to get it out. We tried,” and her voice catches on_ tried _in a way that makes Nora want to get up and hug her, “but the risk was too high.”_

_She was four when Abby found her. The chip has been off since then. The chip was in her when Abby found her. The chip was in her when she was four._

_Someone put a control chip inside of her brain when she was four years old._

_Adrenaline tingles across her tongue and her vision slants a little as all the blood drains from her face._

_Nora leans over the edge of her bed, drags over the trash can, and throws up._

***

Slowly, Nora regains consciousness. There’s a dull, persistent throbbing in the base of her skull, a distinct throbbing unique to being whacked once or twice very hard in the head. She blinks a few times, and everything comes into focus at floor-level. Concrete floor, Rachel’s boots, a black wall behind the boots. She places her palms on the rough floor and carefully pushes herself up. The throbbing gets worse and there’s a rushing noise in her ears as her vision momentarily tunnels – far from her first concussion – but she makes it to sitting. Nora leans against the blissfully-cool concrete wall behind her and closes her eyes again. 

“Morning, sunshine,” Alle says from somewhere across the hall.

She flips off the general direction Alle’s voice came from.

“Here,” Rachel says, followed by the sound of plastic rolling across concrete.

Something hits her foot and Nora opens one eye. Her water bottle, still full, rests at her feet. “Thanks,” she says and picks it up. The water’s warm now, but it’s still wet, and she takes a few gulps. “Any chance you can find some pain killers?”

Rachel tosses her a small packet. “They took most of our gear, but left us with our rations, water, and medkits.”

She misses the catch and the pill packet lands on the floor beside her. “That was nice of them.” Nora rips the packet open and dumps the four pills directly into her mouth and swallows. She drinks half of her water and then frowns; she’s still wearing her boots, but she’s not wearing her armor anymore, and the clothes she has on were made to fit someone twice her size and five inches taller. “What happened?”

“We’re fucked,” Carlos says. He rolls up the short sleeves of the shirt he’s been given and stretches his arms up over his head. A tiny square of gauze is taped to the inside of his left arm. He catches Nora staring, and he nods. 

There’s no gauze taped to her arm, so she files that fact away as a problem for five minutes from now. One thing at a time. 

Nora looks around, beyond the cell she and Rachel are in, and counts her teammates. None of them are in armor anymore; all of them are wearing the same nondescript black pants and white shirt she’s been given, though the clothes fit a little better on the men. Across the hall, Carlos is in a cell by himself next to Jonah and Alle. Interesting that they seem to have split up the teams; Nora hopes that was coincidental but doubts it. Carlos’ assessment is not wrong. “Where’s Micah?”

“They took him about half an hour ago,” Rachel says. She holds her arm out, revealing a bandage wrapped around the inside of her elbow. “They’re doing tests. Scanners, too.”

“Great,” Nora says to herself, closing her eyes for a moment as she forces back a wave of either nausea, panic, or fear. Probably all three. A little louder, she asks, “How long was I out?”

“Few hours,” Jonah says, gently rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He peers at the top of his cell. “How’s the head?”

“I’ll live.” Raising an eyebrow, she follows his gaze and looks at the same spot in her own cell. There isn’t anything obviously keeping them in: just three walls, no bars, no doors. “Force field?”

“Force field,” he confirms.

“Why’d they keep us all together?” Not that she’s complaining. She’s not glad to be captured, but she’s glad she’s captured and with her squad. But if she were going to capture six people who attempted to infiltrate her base, she’d lock them up separately. Away from each other.

Carlos shrugs. “Base schematics showed only one cell block. Four cells,” he points to the three they’re occupying, “and that one’s got a couple skeletons in it.”

“Gross.”

He nods. “Guess they blew their security budget on some AA guns and a giant fuck-off shield.”

“We have six days before we miss our check in,” Jonah says. “Anyone got any ideas?”

Before anyone can speak up, the door clangs open. Two guards in Cerberus armor lead Micah down the short hallway, followed by a third guard. 

Nora immediately goes into high alert, pushing all other problems aside as she checks Micah for any visible injuries. He meets her gaze and gives her a little nod – _situation fucked up, but in one piece._ She returns the nod – _understood_ – but doesn’t relax, especially as the one of the guards looks straight at her.

The two guards holding Micah adjust their grips on his arms, ensuring he won’t go anywhere as the third guard taps at a control panel in the hallway. The force field shimmers and deactivates with a low buzz. They shove Micah into the cell with Carlos and he pretends to stumble past them. They reactivate his force field before deactivating the one in front of Alle and Jonah. 

Alle tenses on her toes, ready to sprint, and her fingers begin to twitch in a pattern Nora knows will pull an annihilation field – but the guards are too fast and grab her before she has a chance to move. Alle squirms and fights against them, struggling against their grip as their fingers dig into her arms. “Fuck _off_ ,” she grunts, jamming her elbow into the solar plexus of one. He doubles over with a groan, but the third guard steps up and presses an injection spray against her neck. Within a moment, Alle slumps over, sedated. They hook her arms over their shoulders and drag her out of the cell.

Nora swallows. There’s at least some strange comfort in the fact that the guards have brought the rest of her friends back.

The force field shimmers again, active. The door clangs shut, and they’re left alone again.

“Right,” Jonah says as footsteps retreat down the hallway outside. “Ideas?”

“Vakarian’s the only one they haven’t taken yet,” Carlos says.

“Best for last,” she grins, trying to cover up her growing terror. _Five minutes from now_ is rapidly becoming _now._

He smiles at her and continues. “When they bring Carter back and come for her, Wu can rush them. Take a chance on just blowing our way out of here?”

“No,” Rachel says. “There are three guards right outside the door, and another six down the hall toward the labs. The three doing snatch-and-grab aren’t armed, but the ones outside are. Even if you manage to avoid Stabby McNeedles, knock those three guys out, _and_ get our force fields down, we’re screwed as soon as we leave the cells.”

“There are six of us,” he points out.

“True. But they’re probably going to keep Carter sedated, so that takes us down to five.”

“Four,” Micah says. “Someone’s gonna need to carry her out.”

“Four. I sprained my ankle. Three. Vakarian’s nursing a concussion, so she counts as half a person right now. We’re outnumbered and outgunned. Brute force isn’t going to get us out of here.”

Normally, Nora would argue about the concussion knocking her down to half capacity; she’s fought through worse. But trying very hard not to focus on the very real fact that she is captured in a Cerberus facility and is next up for tests and scans probably makes up the difference. 

They’re all silent for a good long while. The pain in Nora’s head starts to recede and she takes a closer look at their surroundings. Concrete floor, concrete walls. She estimates the cell to be nine feet square, give or take a few inches. The ceiling’s tall enough that she could stand on a chair and not be able to change the blown-out lightbulb in the corner.

Jonah tilts his head. “Does anyone know if those cameras have sound?”

“What are you thinking?” Nora asks, though she has an inkling. She and Carlos did something similar during an N2 mission that went sideways. Less sideways than this, though.

“If they have sound, I shouldn’t say.”

The guards return after a while, towing a conscious, but heavily-sedated, Alle. They let her stumble back into her cell, and then come for Nora. She doesn’t struggle – staying alert seems like a wise idea – but she makes them work for it. They roughly grab her arms, hard enough that she feels their fingers bruise, and pull her upward. She trips over her water bottle and catches herself before she falls.

The cells are at the end of a hall, and Nora counts guards as they walk. Rachel was right: three outside the cellblock door, and another six stationed at various points down the hall, all of them armed. The guards dragging her suddenly turn and push her into a lab.

An exam chair sits in the middle, its restraints open and unlocked. She briefly considers fighting – two on one, she can take them, even with the concussion – but Stabby McNeedles comes in behind them. She lets them shove her into the chair and tighten the restraints around her ankles, wrists, and stomach. 

“Nice meeting you,” she calls out as they leave.

She tests the restraints, though she knows it’s pointless. They’re secured tight. With a slow exhale, she looks around. It looks like any other medical lab: test tubes, a microscope, scanners, monitors, overpowering smell of antiseptic. It’s a little dark in corners, and a spotlight points directly over the chair. 

The door opens. 

“Ah, the last one. Sorry about your nap,” he says with an accent she can’t quite place. It’s not from Earth, or the Citadel. Somewhere in the Terminus, maybe. He steps into the light.

Brown skin, brown eyes, dark hair, lab coat. Dimples. A silver earring through his eyebrow. If she weren’t strapped to chair in the middle of a Cerberus medical lab with him looking at her like he’s plotting how best to dissect her spleen, she’d think he was kind of cute.

“I suppose asking for your name is pointless,” he says, wiping an alcohol pad against the crook of her arm. 

“Good assumption,” she says, years of training keeping her voice calm and confident even when her heart’s pounding so loud she can hardly hear. She watches as he takes four vials of blood. “I suppose asking what you plan to do with that is pointless,” she says when he puts the vials in a rack and holds a piece of gauze to her arm to stop the bleeding.

He grins at her. “Good assumption.” He lifts the gauze and tosses it into a biohazard bin, replacing it with a small bandage onto her arm, just in case. “Now that that unpleasantness is done with. Onto more fun things.”

“Interesting interpretation of fun,” she says as she watches him reach up. She hadn’t noticed the body scanner hanging from the ceiling. He pulls it down and centers it over her. She stares up into the scanner and swallows. It’s probably as pointless as trying to break the restraints and asking what he intends to do with her blood, but she hopes the scanner isn’t good enough to notice the chip. 

“Well, fun for me,” he says. “Try not to move.” The scanner activates with a low hum. He sits on a stool and rolls across the floor to a workstation. “Let’s see what you look like on the inside, shall we?” He flips the bank of monitors on, and they all flicker to life showing sections of her body. He taps on the input screen and the monitors turn so Nora can see them.

She focuses on the monitor in the top left, showing the layer-by-layer scan of her brain. The angle’s bad; she can’t see how detailed the scanner is, and she lifts her head, trying to get even a glimpse. 

“Uh uh,” he scolds, clucking his tongue against his teeth. “Be still, remember?”

She narrows her eyes at him but rests her head down again. If she doesn't cooperate, they'll force the issue anyway.

The scanner whirs and they sit in silence for several minutes.

_Good air in, bad air out. Good air in, bad air out._

“Now what,” he says, squinting up at the monitor, “are you?” He zooms in.

Adrenaline spikes through her veins, heart pounding like she’s just shotgunned three energy drinks, vision sharpening as she becomes acutely aware of how tight these restraints are and just how much she can’t move. _My fight or flight response is heavily weighted toward fight_ , and right now she can’t do either. Shallow breath catches in her throat and her muscles twitch, ready to run, ready to fight, but stuck absolutely still. 

He turns to her. “Did you know you have a chip in your head?”

She shrugs. “News to me.” _Good air in, bad air out_. _Breathe, Nora._

He stands and pushes the scanner up out of the way. “I know someone who will be _very_ interested in seeing this. Don’t move,” he says with a leering smile.

She manages a sarcastic grin for him and twists her wrist in a little wave. He shuts the door, leaving her alone.

“Shit. Shit shit _shit_.” Nora slams her heel against the chair as best she can and twists her wrists around in their restraints. The lab is full of things she could use to defend herself, she could probably even make it down the hallway to free her friends so they can all get out of here, but she can’t reach any of them. She kicks the chair again with a growl. “Gods, spirits, goddess, whoever the _fuck_ is listening, help would not go unappreciated right now.”

She isn’t alone for ninety seconds before the door opens, revealing a tall, pale leggy blonde with an angular jaw. A shorter, square-faced man follows her into the room. They’re both wearing white lab coats over nice civilian clothing, and the woman’s heels click on the floor as she crosses the lab.

The woman smiles down at Nora. There’s a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. In another life, she might have looked kind. 

“My lost little sheep, finally come home,” she says with a light Australian accent, a wistful tone in her voice. She softly brushes a stray tendril of hair from Nora’s face. “It’s good to see you again, Nora. You’ve grown up.”

Nora flinches away from the woman’s touch. “Who are you?”

“I’m not surprised you don’t remember me; you were very small when last we met.” She sits down beside the chair and demurely crosses her legs. “My name is Charlotte, though soon enough you’ll know me as Control.”

Icy cold races through Nora’s veins. _Someone put a control chip inside my brain when I was four years old._ She’s had twelve years to imagine this moment, though she always imagined their positions being reversed. “I was a _kid_ , you bitch, what the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Charlotte smiles as if Nora just told her that her hair looked pretty. “Adam’s going to bring you back to us, and then you won’t need to understand.”

Nora’s so focused on Charlotte, cold fury now racing alongside the panic and adrenaline, that she doesn’t see Adam withdraw a tablet from his coat pocket, nor does she see him tap a command into it. She doesn’t hear the slight beep or feel the spark race down her spine. 

And suddenly, searing, blinding hot pain erupts inside her head. Burning pain slithers down every nerve as electrical sparks explode behind her eyes. Nora tries not to make a sound, but a raw scream rips from her throat as her everything goes white. 


	7. what you call home is a box of memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which shit very much hits the fan.

_Charlotte Turner - Scientific Log - 3 March 2190._

_Subject Rho remains stable. Aptitude tests (see attached results) show considerable promise, and subject seems likely to continue on the same trajectory. Subject is vulnerable to suggestion and wants to please her testers. Once her brain has developed enough to activate Damocles permanently, Subject Rho should be a perfect candidate for long-term programming. Estimations put the earliest Control trigger point at age 21._

_While the team and I are hesitant to label this variant of Damocles an unparalleled success, it is most certainly a more viable prototype than all previous models. Experiment repetition determines true success. Subject Sigma is being prepared for pre-op beginning 0800 tomorrow._

_Recommendation: provided she passes the next battery of physical tests, Subject Rho is ready for return to her parents on Rayngiri Station to begin integration and programming. For ease of assimilation, Subject Rho should be referred to in all reports from this point forward as Nora._

_End log._

***

Nora wakes up as two guards drag her down the hallway. It’s loud inside her head. Crowded. Chaotic. Like there’s another voice trying to be heard, but it hasn’t figured out how to speak yet, only scream.

Her body feels too heavy and her head feels too light as she tries to get her feet steady underneath her. A dull pain thuds behind her eyes, and the hallway doubles and slants sideways. 

She stumbles over her feet as they turn into the cell block and falls when the guards push her back into the cell with Rachel. Pain blooms behind her knees as she slams into the freezing concrete. Shivers start deep in her chest and she crawls away from the force field into a corner. 

“Nora?” Rachel asks quietly once the guards are gone.  

Nora thrusts out one shaking hand, keeping Rachel at an arm’s length away. She could certainly use a medic, but the second voice scratches at the inside of her head, trying to find its way out. Focusing only on her breathing, and not the way her head spins or how every muscle throbs or the darkness pushing at the edges of her vision, she slowly turns and sits. She presses herself up against the corner, as far away from her teammates as she can get. A few minutes pass before she trusts that it will be her own voice when she speaks. 

“The chip’s active,” Nora whispers hoarsely, staring at the concrete floor. Her vision swims again. She leans her head back against the wall and takes three deep, controlled breaths. She desperately wants to take a moment and let those three words sink in, but the other voice scrabbles at the walls of her skull. 

“It showed up on the scan, and they brought someone else in, and,” the dull, wordless voice expands inside her head, beginning to push her own voice aside. She bites down hard, grinding her teeth together, and pushes back. “I don’t know, she had an assistant and he did something, and it was like someone stabbed me in the head. And now there’s this other…voice.” She gestures at the air beside her head, as if they could see the noise as clearly as she can hear it.

“Why’d they send you back?” Carlos asks.

Nora abruptly opens her eyes and looks up at him. Spots dance across her vision in the bright light. She very carefully avoids looking at anyone else. “I don’t know,” she says. It’s a very good question, and if roles were reversed, they certainly wouldn’t send her back unless…a thought crosses her mind. Nora thinks – _hopes_ – that it’s her own. “Knock me out. Now.”

“Nora…” Alle says gently from her cell across the hall.

She forces herself to look at Alle, her best friend since they were fifteen. Alle bites her lip and looks like she’s about to cry. _I’m sorry_ , Nora wants to say. _You’re the reason I made it through high school and now I’m the reason you’re probably going to die here. I’m sorry._

“She’s right,” Jonah says. “If the chip’s active, they would’ve kept her away from us unless there’s something they wanted.”

Nora finally sits up straight and looks at all of them. She had no business going on this mission and they all knew it, but they all followed her here anyway.

“Montgomery,” Micah says,” right here,” he points to a pulse point under his jaw. “Just a little pressure. It won’t hurt and she’ll go right out.”

Nora manages to smile at him. Always calm, always centered, always her steady rock, even in the middle of this mission that’s gone as completely sideways as it could. 

“I’m sorry,” Rachel says to her. She gestures to Nora’s jaw and looks to Micah for confirmation. He nods.

“It’s okay,” Nora says. None of this is okay, and maybe it never will be again, but she’s a liability they need to take out of the equation. “Just do it. Please.” Her breath stutters when she inhales, and she doesn’t look at Alle.

 _I’m so sorry_.

***

Alle watches, helpless, as Rachel hits the spot Micah pointed to and Nora crumples to the ground. Rachel waves her hand over Nora’s face, snaps her fingers, even claps her hands loudly right next to Nora’s ear, all to no response. Out like a light, just like Micah promised. At least it was quick and easy. 

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Nora’s her best friend, but right now she’s a liability. They’re soldiers, they’ve trained for this.

Well. Not _this_. No one could ever train for _this_. But they’ve trained for compartmentalizing, for dissociating from their emotions until there’s time for it, for focusing on the mission and the mission only. Three deep breaths – _good air in, bad air out_ – and Alle opens her eyes.

Jonah’s popping the latches on his boot.

“Seriously?”

He stretches his neck to one side and then the other, cracking his neck, but Alle well knows that trick. She’s used it herself countless times as a discrete way of checking security cameras. “Move,” he whispers, not moving his mouth.

Alle blinks at him. They’re locked in a 9x9 cell. There’s nowhere _to_ move. She’s on the verge of saying so when he gives her a slight shake of his head.

“Between me and the cameras,” he says. It’s eerie hearing him speak without his lips moving. “Look natural.”

“No one in the history of that phrase has ever looked natural,” she mutters, but gets to her feet. She dusts off her palms on her pants and walks to the front of the cell, just beside the force field. She cracks her neck, pulling the same maneuver as Jonah, and then stretches out her arms as she looks across the hall. Nora’s cell is diagonally across and at a bad angle, but she can make out her friend lying on the floor. Rachel’s put her folded-up sweatshirt underneath Nora’s head and is kneeling beside her. She holds two fingers to Nora’s wrist and looks at her watch. 

“How is she?” Alle asks softly, once Rachel sets Nora’s arm across her stomach. 

“Her vitals are okay, but I can’t tell what the chip’s doing without a scanner,” she whispers without moving her lips, just like Jonah.

Alle wonders whether Jonah had his entire team take ventriloquism lessons. And whether that might not be a bad idea for Chimera once they get out of this mess. 

“What’s the number on those cameras?” Jonah asks, still a whisper.

Alle tries to surreptitiously squint at the camera, but it’s Micah who answers.

“ERC 5B,” he says.

“Good,” Jonah says, in a normal voice this time. “The Elanus B models don’t have audio.”

“How could you _possibly_ know that?” Carlos asks.

Jonah stares at the solid wall separating their two cells, as if he could stare straight through the concrete at Carlos. “Asks the man who gave us a lecture on _bears_ on the way here.”

There’s a brief pause. “Carry on.”

“Anyway,” Jonah says, “we should avoid talking directly into the camera in case someone on staff can lip read, but we should be okay to talk.”

Alle tears her focus away from her unconscious friend to look over her shoulder at him. She raises her eyebrow: he has his boot off now and frowns as he tries to pry something off the side of the sole. A compartment pops open. “Okay, _what_ are you doing?”

He turns his boot so the open compartment faces down, gives the boot a solid tap, and a small omnitool falls into his lap. He holds it up, careful to keep it in her shadow. 

Alle blinks. “You keep a spare omnitool in your boot?”

“You don’t?”

“Well, now I will.” Under the guise of stretching, mindful of Jonah’s warning, she turns back to the others. “Wu has an omnitool,” she tells the others as she bends over, palming the floor. Better Cerberus get a nice view of her ass than see the word _omnitool_ on her lips.

“I can piggyback onto their outgoing signal, but it’ll probably only work once,” he says. “Votes on what to say?”

“Mission FUBARed,” Carlos suggests. “Short and sweet.”

Jonah sighs, and Alle bites back a grin at the flash of irritation that crosses his face. She shifts position, careful to keep the bulk of her body in front of the camera.

“While accurate,” Jonah says, “I think any potential help would appreciate a little more intel than ‘FUBAR.’”

“Mission FUBAR,” Micah repeats the headline. “Team captured, AA guns online, Vakarian compromised.” He pauses. “Vega will know what that means, but Cerberus won’t know that we know about the chip.”

Rachel looks down at Nora. “I think that ship has sailed.”

“We have to take the risk,” Jonah says. “Any rescue team needs to know what they’re walking into.” He starts to type the message.

“Uhm,” Alle says, stretching her legs back behind her into a downward-facing dog. “Just a thought, and I don’t know what kind of rock these guys might be living under, but maybe we _don’t_ risk letting Cerberus know they have the turian councilor’s daughter? Call her Nora.” She sighs as her calves start to release their tension; she sat on the concrete floor too long.

“Good call,” the other three say in unison as Jonah changes the message.

A few minutes of silence pass while Jonah encrypts the message. “Okay,” he says. “Sent.” He slips the omnitool back into his boot and puts it on again. Alle stands back up straight and blinks away a light wave of vertigo.

“And now we wait,” Carlos says.

“And now we wait,” Rachel echoes.

Alle sits down at the front of the cell and sighs. Nora doesn’t move.

***

_“I’ll be fine, Mom,” Nora says, as much for her own sake as her mother’s. “I have meds, and Quentus is on call if I need a lunch buddy.”_

_Mom nods. “If you need anything…”_

_“I will call you,” she promises. Her heart starts to pound, but she has to go in. She can’t stand here in the school office forever. Good air in, bad air out._

_Mom pulls her into a close hug. “I love you,” she whispers, and kisses her cheek. “I’ll see you tonight.”_

_Nora hugs her tightly. “Love you too.” Before she loses her nerve entirely and begs for her mom to just let her take classes online for the rest of high school, she lets go and steps into the small inner room._

_Five other transfer students sit at various desks around the room: three humans she doesn’t recognize, the son of the turian ambassador (she gives him a little wave, and he nods in return), and a drell she’s seen around at various parties. She takes a seat near the back; not too far to be in the back, but far enough away from the front and behind everyone, so she can see them all. No chance of them whispering behind her back. With a sharp breath, she settles into the hard chair and pulls her tablet from her backpack._

_As the bell rings, another student runs in through the door, frozen coffee in hand, sneaking in right in front of the assistant dean. She sits down two seats away from Nor and affects a posture that looks like she was sitting there the whole time._

_The assistant dean clears his throat in clear disapproval, the girl bites back a smile, and he begins introductions and orientation._

_As soon as the bell rings, announcing lunch, Nora slips out and starts to text Quentus to see if he can meet her at the smoothie place down the street. Hearing her name, Nora turns around and sees Alle dropping her empty cup into a matter recycler and then rushing catching up with her._

_“Want to grab lunch?” Alle asks, squinting in the fake Citadel sun as they walk outside._

_Nora smiles. “Yeah, sure.” She quickly changes her text._

> __**NV:** I’ve got lunch covered  
>  __**QV:** did you make a friend?  
>  __**NV:** okay I know that’s supposed be genuine, but you just sound like a dick  
>  __**QV:** noted  
>  __**NV:** and maybe  
>  _**QV:** still want me to meet you after school?  
>  __**NV:** yes please  
>  __**QV:** i’ll have coffee. enjoy lunch with your maybe-friend!_

_She closes her messaging app and follows Alle down the street and around the corner, into an unassuming alley that smells delicious. Food stalls of all cuisines from all species line the walls, leaving only a small, crowded space to navigate down the street._

_“Wow,” she says. The Presidium is huge, she could never hope to see all of it, but she thought she’d found all the cool lunch spots._

_“Yeah. My roommate at Gagarin Prep went to CLA for a bit, told me about this place. Meet you on the other side in ten minutes?”_

_Nora nods and goes off in search of lunch. As tempting as that oorlak smells, she doubts they can make it levo for her like Dad can at home, so she passes the stall and keeps walking. She wanders the aisle and eventually settles on an asari fruit salad with grilled tofu._

_On her way to the other end, she spies a familiar logo and makes a quick, unintended stop. “Hi, Lily,” she says to the woman behind the bakery stall._

_“Hey, Nora!” Lily grins. “Your grandmother told me you were starting at CLA today.” She slides a sprinkled sugar cookie into a bag and hands it over to Nora._

_Nora reaches for it, then hesitates. “Can I have two? I’m meeting someone.”_

_“Sure.” Lily puts another cookie in the bag. “Hannah’s here on Tuesdays, by the way.”_

_“Thanks,” Nora says, smiling widely. She puts the cookie bag into her backpack. She sees her grandmother regularly but knowing she could find her here during the week if she needed is nice. “I’ll see you later,” she says, waving as she heads off to the end to meet Alle._

_She checks her watch as she exits the chaos - eleven minutes. Alle isn’t there. And for thirty horrifying seconds, Nora stands there alone._

_Adrenaline rushes in, bitter on her tongue, and her breathing grows shallow. She wipes sweaty palms on her pants and tries to bring her rate back to normal through sheer force of will - she can’t possibly be having a panic attack on the very first day of a new school, she can’t, and if she starts on any of the coping methods her therapist gave her, it means she’s definitely having a panic attack._

_And she is_ not having a panic attack _._

_And then Alle pushes her way out of the crowd. “Sorry! The gyro line was nuts –” she stops suddenly. “Are you okay?”_

_Nora lets out a slow, controlled breath. “Yeah,” she smiles. “Let’s go find somewhere to sit.”_

***

Nora awakens back in the lab, restrained to the chair. It isn’t the slow wakefulness of rising naturally, but the sudden jolt of chemically-induced consciousness. She immediately closes her eyes, feigning continued sleep. Maybe she’ll hear something useful. Whether she has the chance to inform her teammates about any intel is another story, and a problem for later.

“Are you sure about this?” Adam’s voice.

“Of course,” Charlotte says, a little annoyed.

“This wasn’t our intended target.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she says, with a clipped tone that clearly silences any continued argument. “This is better than we could’ve hoped for.”

“How so?” Adam again.

By the small sounds they make as they move around the lab, Nora gathers that they’re the only two in here.

Charlotte scoffs. “Do you really think Shepard and Vakarian _aren’t_ going to turn the galaxy upside down to find their daughter? Our sources think there’s a better than even chance one or both of them will even come in person. It’s why we let her team’s little SOS through.”

Involuntarily, Nora stiffens at the mention of her parents and the trap they’re walking into. She doesn’t know how her team got a message out, but if she’s sent back to the cells, maybe – _maybe_ – they can get a second one out with a warning. 

A shadow crosses her face. Nora tries for another few seconds but gives up the act and opens her eyes.

“Of course we know who you are,” Charlotte smiles. It’s meant to be friendly, and Nora sees the ice beneath it. “I do apologize,” she says.

This woman has a _lot_ to apologize for, but Nora suspects the apology isn’t for what she’s hoping. “For what?”

Charlotte draws a stool closer to the bed and sits down. She crosses her legs, primly tugging down the demure skirt. It’s a different outfit than before; Nora wonders how many days have passed. She picks up a tablet from the side table and begins tapping at it.

Nora raises her eyebrows expectantly.

“There’s a scientific explanation,” Charlotte says, turning her attention to a console above Nora’s head, “but it’s a little dull.”

Nora strains her neck backward, trying to catch a glimpse of the console. She’s strapped tight to the table and can’t do anything about the console, not even if there’s a big red control switch, but it feels better than just lying here. The angle’s strange, and the most she’s able to see before Charlotte pushes it over to Adam is an image of a brain with a glowing dot pulsing near the middle. Safe to assume it’s hers. Nora settles against the bed again and tests the restraints one more time, with just as little luck as before. 

A slight buzz starts inside her skull, and the dull, incoherent voice from earlier begins to scream again. Both the buzz and the voice are so faint that she probably wouldn’t notice either if she weren’t lying strapped to a table in a quiet lab. 

“I’m afraid reprogramming you is going to hurt,” Charlotte says. She looks down at Nora. “This would have been easier for both of us if you’d been with us from the beginning.”

“Somehow, I’m not too upset about that.”

Charlotte gives her a tight smile. “We’ll talk about that in the morning.” She looks over at Adam. “It’s ready. Begin, please.”

The buzzing slams into an earthquake inside her head, and the screams tear through her skull like they’re going to burst her eardrums from the inside out. Nora tries to hang on, tries to fight it and stay awake, but blinding-hot pain consumes her. She struggles against the restraints, trying to curl up in a ball, trying to cover her head, as if that will help at all. The bite of the restraints against her skin hardly registers through the stabbing, splitting, _breaking_ feeling inside her head. Hot tears fall down her cheeks and a voice starts to plead – “Stop, please, stop, please please please, stop,” the voice sobs.

Nora hardly recognizes the hoarse, desperate voice as her own.

“Higher,” Control’s voice cuts through. 

And then something snaps, ripping the last _please_ from her throat, and Nora just _screams_.

***

_Nora stares at her hands. The question has been burning at her for days, and now with Quentus out for the night with some friends and Dad stuck at work, she’s alone with Mom. It isn’t that she doesn’t trust her brother or father, but something about her mother has always just been…calm. Comforting._

_True._

_“Mom?” she calls quietly toward the kitchen. She waits for her to look over. “How do I know this is real?”_

_Her mother raises an eyebrow, and Nora taps at her head._

_“Is that what this is about?” Mom asks gently. She drops a handful of mini marshmallows into both mugs and brings them over to the couch._

_Nora takes one mug and waits until Mom’s settled beside her. “No,” she says. “Not really.” And it’s not – it’s about school and friends who suddenly turned their backs. But the chip isn’t helping. It never has. Part of her wishes they’d never told her about it. She knows why they did, and the rest of her does appreciate knowing, but she’s been thinking a lot recently about how everything would be a little bit easier if she didn’t know._

_“Talk to me,” Mom says, reaching out to gently tuck Nora’s hair behind her ear, like she used to do when Nora was small and had a head full of curls._

_She sips at her hot chocolate. “I used to be able to ignore it,” she says. “But then all that…crap,” she waves her hand with the generalization, wrapping all of her panic and anxiety and stress into one word, “happened, and I couldn’t anymore.” She shrugs. “Like my brain figured it was already freaking out so went ‘why not’ and added the chip onto the pile of bullshit.”_

_Mom nods and takes a drink of her own hot chocolate. “I’m real,” she says. “You’re real. And this is real.”_

_“If you were a Cerberus hallucination, you’d say that.”_

_She smiles a quiet little sad smile. “It’s something your dad said to me,” she says. “And I told him pretty much the same thing.”_

_Nora laughs softly and takes a sip that’s mostly melted marshmallow._

_“But,” she waits until Nora looks back at her. “At some point, you’ve gotta trust something. Otherwise that pit’s pretty deep.”_

_She thinks about making a joke, about already being way over her head in that particular deep end, but there’s a strange look on Mom’s face. Sad, worried, concerned, and something Nora’s never seen on her mother before – fear. She swallows back the joke._

_“Something made you trust me thirteen years ago,” Mom says softly. “Hold onto that. This is real. I promise.”_


End file.
